Richard D. Ryder

Richard Hood Jack Dudley Ryder is a British writer, psychologist, and animal rights advocate born in 1940. He coined the term 'speciesism' in 1970 to describe the exclusion of nonhuman animals from moral protections, and later developed the philosophy of 'painism' in the 1990s. He served as chairman of the RSPCA Council (1977-1979) and president (2020-2023), and has been instrumental in advancing animal protection legislation in the UK and EU over five decades.