Richard D. Ryder

Richard D. Ryder
Richard D. Ryder (2012)
Born	1940 (aged 77) Rempstone Hall, Corfe Castle, Dorset
Nationality	British
Education	MA (experimental psychology) University of Cambridge, 1963 Diploma (clinical psychology) University of Edinburgh PhD (Social and Political Sciences) University of Cambridge, 1993
Occupation	Writer, psychologist, animal rights advocate
Known for	Animal rights, opposition to animal research, coining of the term "speciesism"
Parent(s)	Major Douglas Claud Dudley Ryder, and Vera Hamilton-Fletcher (née Cook)
Website	www.richardryder.com

Richard Hood Jack Dudley Ryder (born 1940) is a British writer, psychologist, and animal rights advocate.

Ryder became known in the 1970s as a member of the Oxford Group, a group of intellectuals loosely centred on the University of Oxford who began to speak out against animal use, in particular factory farming and animal research. He was working at the time as a clinical psychologist at the Warneford Hospital in Oxford, and had himself been involved in animal research in the United Kingdom and United States.

In 1970, he coined the term speciesism to describe the exclusion of nonhuman animals from the protections available to human beings. In 1977 he became chairman of the RSPCA Council, serving until 1979, and helped to organise the first academic animal rights conference, held in August 1977 at Trinity College, Cambridge. The conference produced a "Declaration against Speciesism", signed by 150 people.

Ryder is the author of a number of books about animal research, animal rights, and morality in politics, including Victims of Science (1975), Animal Revolution (1989), and Painism: A Modern Morality (2001).

Ryder was born in Purbeck, Dorset, to Major Douglas Claud "Jack" Dudley Ryder, and his second wife, Vera Hamilton-Fletcher (née Cook). Jack Dudley Ryder was the great-grandson of the Honourable Granville Ryder (1799–1879), second son of Dudley Ryder, 1st Earl of Harrowby (1762–1847). Ryder was raised on the family estate, Rempstone Hall, in Corfe Castle.

He obtained his bachelor's degree in experimental psychology from the University of Cambridge (1960–1963), followed by a period of research into animal behaviour at Columbia University, and a diploma in clinical psychology from the University of Edinburgh. After Edinburgh, he worked as a clinical psychologist at the Warneford psychiatric hospital in Oxford. In 1980 he ran unsuccessfully for Parliament, and founded the Liberal Democrat's Animal Protection Group. He later went back to Cambridge, and was awarded his PhD in Social and Political Sciences in 1993. He held an Andrew W. Mellon visiting professorship at Tulane University in New Orleans in 1996.