An Appetite for Wonder

As a young man, Dr. Dawkins studied zoology at Oxford University. After earning his degree, he taught and conducted research at various universities. In the 1970s and 1980s, he turned his attention to genetics. The Selfish Gene was published in 1976. This book popularized the gene-centered view of evolution, which had been proposed years earlier by Dr. Waddington and Dr. Williams, among others. It also contained the word meme, which he coined to express ideas in terms of their evolutionary history. By breaking down ideas into pieces that could be passed from one person to another, memes were a way to study cultural evolution in a scientific manner—similar to how individuals inherit genetic traits from their parents in biological evolution...