Author: Nicole Scott

World-renowned paleoanthropologist and conservationist Richard Leakey died in his home in Nairobi, Kenya, on January 2, 2022. He was an advocate for the advancement and acceptance of human evolution, especially as it related directly to Africa. Richard Erskine Frere Leakey was born on December 19, 1944, in Nairobi to Louis and Mary Leakey. He spent …

“Ant Man,” “Father of Sociobiology,” “Father of Biodiversity”: these epithets were how E. O. Wilson became affectionately known due to his lifelong work with insects and in environmental advocacy. He was also known for his secular humanist ideas pertaining to religion and ethics. Wilson died on December 26, 2021, in Burlington, Massachusetts, at the age …

Kurt Westergaard, the creator of the most provocative of the famous Danish Muhammad cartoons, has died of natural causes at age eighty-six. Born on July 13, 1935, in the village of Døstrup, Denmark, Westergaard grew up in a conservative Christian home but turned from these roots in high school when he was introduced to cultural …

Philosophy professor and ethics collaborator Richard Thompson Hull died on March 15, 2021, in Tallahassee, Florida, after several years of health problems. Born December 29, 1939, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Hull served in the U.S. Army after high school for six months and then served in the Army Reserve for six years before attending undergraduate …

Hector Avalos, a respected biblical scholar despite his open atheism, died after a battle with cancer on April 12, 2021. Born October 8, 1958, in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, Avalos completed his undergraduate studies at the University at Arizona. He was awarded a master of theological studies from Harvard Divinity School. In 1991, he received a …

Bruce Adams was many things to the Western New York community: artist, teacher, mentor, writer, adviser, husband, father, and friend. He was also involved in the humanist movement with the Center for Inquiry (CFI), copublisher of Free Inquiry. Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1952, Adams was the oldest of six children and attended school …

Poet, author, editor, and Charles Darwin expert Philip Appleman passed away on April 11, 2020, at the age of ninety-four. Born in Indiana on February 8, 1926, Appleman served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II and the Merchant Marine after the war. He received degrees from Northwestern University, the University of …

Marvin Kohl, PhD, died on July 8, 2020, in an assisted living facility in Massachusetts after surviving COVID-19 in April. Kohl, for more than thirty years a philosopher in the SUNY system, was the author of The Morality of Killing and the editor of Beneficient Euthanasia and Infanticide and the Value of Life. He was …

Mario Bunge passed away in the loving company of his wife, Marta, and children, Eric and Silvia, on February 24, 2020, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Bunge was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on September 21, 1919. He studied physics and mathematics as an undergraduate at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata and founded a Workers …

Edd Doerr was born on December 21, 1930, in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of Eugene Henry and Mary Catherine (Burk) Doerr. He received his Bachelor of Science from Indiana University in 1956. A former teacher of history and Spanish, he is the author, coauthor, editor, or translator of twenty books, including My Life as a …

Adolf Grünbaum was born in Germany in 1923 and immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1938. From a young age, he had philosophical questions that led to theistic research and the declaration of his atheism just before his bar mitzvah. After learning English in the United States, he earned his undergraduate degree …

Deo Ssekitoleko has been credited with bringing humanism to Uganda, Kenya, and East Africa when he first brought young people from the University of Nairobi, Kenya, to the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) General Assembly in 2004, which was held in Kampala, Uganda. There students were not only exposed to the IHEU but to …

Jens Christian Skou, born in 1918, may have spent his life in Denmark, but his legacy spread across the world and time. Skou discovered a vital mechanism in the body’s cells, which earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1997. Skou graduated from the University of Copenhagen in 1944 with a degree in medicine …

Wells is best known as an advocate of the thesis that Jesus is a mythical— not historical—figure

Brief reviews from Free Inquiry Vol. 36, No. 4.

“In less than six months, four
secular bloggers have been attacked and killed by machete-wielding men in Bangladesh.”

A review of What If I’m a(n) Atheist? A Teen’s Guide to Exploring a Life Without Religion, by David Seidman.

The Center for Inquiry extends its deepest condolences to the family of Lavanam.

Michael L. Martin, an American analytic philosopher and one of the most formidable academic champions of atheism, passed away unexpectedly at the age of eighty-three in Boston on May 27.

Anne Nicol Gaylor, the principal founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), died at the age of eighty-eight in Wisconsin on June 14.