In the 1960s and 1970s, something radically new began to hang in the air: new ways of understanding biological systems, new ways of thinking that challenge many of our basic assumptions. The biology of the mind, advances in evolutionary biology, physics, information technology, genetics, neurobiology, psychology, engineering, and materials chemistry: all are vital topics related to what it means to be human.

For the first time, we had both the tools and the desire to engage in the scientific study of human nature. No one distinguished themselves, influenced, or was more important to the scientific revolution than evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who, fifty years ago, with the publication of his book The Selfish Gene, changed our perception of our place in Nature.

Dawkins is a man of ideas, those significant ideas that truly influence and change people's lives — transforming the way other scientists think, encouraging them to think in a different, more constructive way. If you haven't read The Selfish Gene, do it now. And if you have read it before, read it again now. It is the book that will be read throughout the 21st century.

The book was first published in 1976 by Oxford University Press. Its thirty-year anniversary edition was released in June 2006, while the forty-year anniversary edition appeared in June 2016. The fifty-year anniversary edition includes a new Epilogue that discusses the ongoing influence of the ideas in the book today.