Richard D. Ryder facts for kids

Richard Hood Jack Dudley Ryder (born 1940) is a British writer and psychologist. In 1969 he became involved with animal rights; he protested against an otter hunt in Dorset. In 1970 he made a new word, "speciesism". He used it in a pamphlet called "Speciesism". It is now in the Oxford Dictionary. Ryder made a theory called painism in 1990. In 2001 a book that Ryder wrote about his theory of painism was published. It was called Painism: A Modern Morality. Painism is the idea that any being that feels pain deserves rights.

Ryder was born in Purbeck in Dorset. He grew up in Corfe Castle.

In 1971 an essay that Ryder wrote about animal testing was published in the book Animals, Men and Morals.

In 1972 he joined the Council of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). Ryder helped to organize the first academic conference about animal rights. The conference was in August 1977 at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1977 he became the chairman of the RSPCA. He stopped being the chairman in 1979.

His first book, Victims of Science, was first published in 1975. It is about how animals were used in scientific research at the time it was written.