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Richard Dawkins
British evolutionary biologist and author of The Selfish Gene (1976), which coined the word "meme," and The God Delusion (2006). He was the first Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford. There is no published IQ test result for Dawkins, and unlike some public figures, no reliable number circulates from any traceable source. His IQ is simply not on record.
Early life and education
Clinton Richard Dawkins was born on March 26, 1941, in Nairobi, in what was then the British colony of Kenya, where his father served in the colonial agricultural service. The family returned to England in 1949. He attended Oundle School before going up to the University of Oxford.
At Oxford he read zoology at Balliol College, completing his undergraduate degree, and then a doctorate (DPhil) studying animal behaviour under the Nobel laureate Niko Tinbergen. This academic record is documented in his degrees and subsequent appointments, but it contains no IQ score. A degree or a doctorate reflects sustained academic performance, not a measured position on an intelligence test, and the two are not interchangeable.
Career and major works
Dawkins held teaching and research posts at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Oxford. In 1976 he published The Selfish Gene, a popular account of the gene-centred view of evolution, in which he introduced the term "meme" to describe a unit of cultural transmission. He followed it with works including The Extended Phenotype (1982), The Blind Watchmaker (1986), and Climbing Mount Improbable (1996).
In 1995 he was appointed the inaugural Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a chair he held until 2008. In 2006 he published The God Delusion, a widely read work on religion and belief. This page reports only on the question of his IQ and takes no position on the content or arguments of his writing on religion or any other subject.
None of this body of work depends on, or reveals, an IQ figure. A productive scientific and writing career is a record of output, not a psychometric measurement.
The IQ question and why no number exists
Unlike many high-profile figures, Dawkins does not have a widely circulated celebrity IQ number attached to his name. There is no named test (Stanford-Binet, WAIS, a Mensa-administered instrument, or any other), no date, no examiner, and no documented administration on record. There is, in short, nothing to report but an absence.
Where round figures are occasionally attributed to him in passing, they share the standard flaw of celebrity-IQ estimates: they are reverse-inferred from a person's visible achievements rather than drawn from a test result. That reasoning is psychometrically invalid. IQ is defined as a normed position relative to a population on a specific instrument; it cannot be deduced from a publication list or an academic post.
Absent a published, named, dated test result, the honest answer to "what is Richard Dawkins's IQ" is: unknown - there is no measurement.
Why celebrity IQ numbers are usually wrong
Three recurring problems make any figure assigned to a public figure unreliable:
- No instrument. A score has no meaning without the test it came from. The same number on two different tests is two different population positions.
- No administration. Real scores come from a documented sitting: where, when, scored by whom. No such record exists for Dawkins.
- Reverse inference. Assigning an IQ because someone is an accomplished scientist or author is circular - it assumes the conclusion and dresses it up as a measurement.
For how real scores are produced and why they are not comparable across tests, see our methodology page and the historical IQ tests archive.
Frequently asked questions
What is Richard Dawkins's IQ?
There is no published IQ test result for Richard Dawkins. He has never released a verified IQ score, and unlike some other public figures, no specific number circulates widely from any traceable source. The honest answer is that his IQ is unknown because it has not been publicly measured.
Why is there no IQ number for Richard Dawkins?
Dawkins has not published the result of any standardized intelligence test, and no examiner, date, or named instrument is on record. Academic achievement at Oxford is documented in his degree and professorial record, but those are educational facts, not psychometric measurements, and they do not produce an IQ figure.
Was Richard Dawkins a strong student at Oxford?
He read zoology at Balliol College, Oxford, completing his undergraduate degree and later a doctorate (DPhil) under the Nobel laureate Niko Tinbergen. He went on to a long academic career and held an endowed Oxford chair. This is a documented academic record, but a degree or a professorship is not an IQ score and cannot be converted into one.
Did Richard Dawkins ever take an IQ test publicly?
There is no public record of Dawkins taking or releasing the result of any IQ test. Without a named test, a date, and a documented administration, there is nothing to report beyond the absence of a measurement.
Can I compare my IQ to Richard Dawkins's?
No, because there is no verified score to compare against. You can take a properly normed IQ test to estimate your own percentile, but there is no Dawkins figure to set it beside. Any number you see attributed to him is invented, not measured.
References
- Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press
- Dawkins, R. (1986). The Blind Watchmaker. Norton
- Dawkins, R. (2006). The God Delusion. Bantam Press
- University of Oxford - academic record (Balliol College zoology degree; DPhil under N. Tinbergen; Simonyi Professorship, 1995-2008)
- Note: no primary psychometric source exists for any IQ figure attributed to Dawkins; no reliable number is on record
Other modern figures
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