Robert J. Richards is the Morris Fishbein Distinguished Service Professor in the History of Science, and Professor in the Departments of Philosophy, History, Psychology, and in the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science; he is director of the Morris Fishbein Center for the History of Science and Medicine. He received his degree from the University of Chicago in 1978. He does research and teaches in history and philosophy of biology and psychology. This includes particular interest in evolutionary biopsychology, ethology, sociobiology, evolutionary ethics, philosophy of history, and German Romanticism. In 2003 and again in 2011, Robert Richards received the Laing book prize from University of Chicago Press; in 2011, he received the Sarton Medal for Lifetime Achievement from the History of Science Society. He was made a Corresponding Member in Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen (2010). He is the author or editor of several books, and many articles, some of which are listed below.
Selected Publications
Debating Darwin, co-authored with Michael Ruse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016)
Was Hitler a Darwinian? Disputed Questions in the History of Evolutionary Theory (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008; Paperback, 2009); 571 pp. (Winner of the University of Chicago Press Laing Prize, 2011.)
The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 606 pp. (Winner of the University of Chicago Press Laing Prize, 2004); paperback edition, 2004
The Meaning of Evolution: The Morphological Construction and Ideological Reconstruction of Darwin's Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992; paperback, 1993). 203 pp.; Spanish language edition, published by Alianza, 1998
Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987; paperback, 1989), 700 pp. (Winner of the 1988 Pfizer Prize awarded by the History of Science Society for the best book in history of science; and the prize of the Biophilosophy Form, 1989.)
Structure of Scientific Revolutions at 50, edited with Lorraine Daston (University of Chicago Press, 2016)
“Evolutionary Ethics, a Theory of Moral Realism,” in Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Ethics, ed. Michael Ruse and Robert J. Richards (Cambridge University Press, 2017)
"The Role of Biography in Intellectual History," KNOW, a Journal on the Formation of Knowledge 1, no. 2 (2017)
"The Impact of German Romanticism on Biology in the 19th Century," The Impact of Idealism: The Legacy in Philosophy and Science, ed. Nicholas Boyle (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
“’Nature is the Poetry of Mind,’ or How Schelling Solved Goethe’s Kantian Problems,” in Michael Friedman and Alfred Nordman (eds.), Kant and the Sciences (Boston: MIT Press, 2006
Media
Robert Richards's recorded interviews and lectures
For full list of Robert Richards's courses back to the 2012-13 academic year, see our searchable course database.