Scott Adams

Scott Raymond Adams (June 8, 1957 – January 13, 2026) was an American cartoonist, author, and commentator. He is best known as the creator of the Dilbert comic strip and nonfiction works of business, self-improvement, commentary, and satire.

Adams created Dilbert in 1989 and worked in various corporate roles before becoming a full-time cartoonist in 1995. By the mid-1990s, Dilbert had gained national prominence in the United States and began to reach a worldwide audience, remaining popular throughout the following decades and spawning several books written by Adams. In the mid-2010s, Adams emerged as an independent commentator on events and politics.

He wrote satire about the social and psychological landscape of white-collar workers in corporations. In addition, Adams wrote books in various other areas, including the pandeistic spiritual novella God's Debris (2001) and books on political and management topics, including Loserthink (2019).

In February 2023, Dilbert was dropped by numerous newspapers and its distributor, Andrews McMeel Syndication, after Adams made racist comments on his Real Coffee YouTube channel, which he defended as hyperbole. He relaunched it as a webcomic on his Locals website one month later and continued to be active on social media. Adams announced he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in May 2025 and retired from drawing that year, but stated he would continue writing Dilbert as long as he was able. He died on January 13, 2026, at the age of 68.

Scott Raymond Adams was born on June 8, 1957, in Windham, New York, to Paul and Virginia (née Vining) Adams. He said that he was "about half German" and had English, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and Dutch ancestry. In 2016, he said he had a small amount of Native American ancestry, but later discovered via 23andMe genetic testing that he has no detectable Native American genetic markers. He was a fan of Peanuts comics while growing up and began drawing comics at age 6. He won a drawing competition at 11.

Adams graduated from Windham-Ashland-Jewett Central School in Windham in 1975 and was the valedictorian of his class of 39 students. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in economics from Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, in 1979. He then moved to California and worked there. In 1986, he earned a Master of Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley. Adams took Dale Carnegie Training courses and called them "life changing".

Adams worked closely with telecommunications engineers at Crocker National Bank in San Francisco between 1979 and 1986. Upon joining the organization, he first worked as a teller. After four months in which he was twice held up at gunpoint, he entered a management training program. His positions included management trainee, computer programmer, budget analyst, commercial lender, product manager, and supervisor.

He later shifted to work at Pacific Bell. Devoting time to building a new career, he woke up every day at 4 a.m. and spent time on various endeavors; cartooning proved to be the most successful of them. Adams created Dilbert during this period of personal exploration. The Dilbert name was suggested by his former boss, Mike Goodwin. Dogbert, originally named Dildog, was loosely based on his family's deceased pet beagle Lucy. His submissions of Dilbert and other comic panels to various publications, including The New Yorker and Playboy, were not published, but an inspirational letter from a fan persuaded Adams to keep trying. He worked at Pacific Bell between 1986 and June 30, 1995, and the personalities he encountered there inspired many of his Dilbert characters. In 1989, while still employed at Pacific Bell, Adams launched Dilbert with United Media. To maintain his income, he continued to draw his cartoons during the early morning hours. His first payment for Dilbert was a monthly royalty check of $368.62. Dilbert gradually became more popular. It was syndicated in 100 newspapers in 1991 and 400 by 1994. Adams attributed his success to his idea of including his email address in the panels, which resulted in feedback and suggestions from readers.

Adams's success grew, and he became a full-time cartoonist as Dilbert reached 800 newspapers. In 1996, his first business book, The Dilbert Principle, was released. It expounded on his concept of the Dilbert principle. In 1997, Adams won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist and Best Newspaper Comic Strip. Logitech CEO Pierluigi Zappacosta invited Adams to impersonate a management consultant, which he did wearing a wig and false mustache. He tricked Logitech managers into adopting a mission statement that Adams described as "so impossibly complicated that it has no real content whatsoever". His writing in San Jose Mercury News West Magazine regarding the incident earned him an Orwell Award. By 2000, the comic was in 2,000 newspapers in 57 countries and 19 languages.

His comic strips were adapted as an animated television series, which premiered in January 1999 and ran for two seasons on UPN. Adams served as executive producer and showrunner, along with Seinfeld writer Larry Charles. The show earned a Primetime Emmy Award in 1999. Adams later said that the show had been canceled because he was white and UPN had decided to shift toward African-American viewers.

In addition to his cartoon work, Adams wrote books in various other areas, including self-improvement and religion. His book God's Debris (2001) lays out a theory of pandeism, in which God blows itself up to see what will happen, which becomes the cause of our universe. In The Religion War (2004), Adams suggests that followers of theistic religions such as Christianity and Islam are subconsciously aware that their beliefs are false, and that this awareness is reflected in their consistently acting as if these religions, and their threats of damnation for sinners, are untrue. In a 2017 interview, Adams said that his books on religion, not Dilbert, would be his ultimate legacy.

Adams often commented on political and social matters, although he said in 2016, "I don't vote and I am not a member of a political party." As of 2008, Adams identified his views on social issues as "[leaning] libertarian, minus the crazy stuff". After endorsing Mitt Romney for the 2012 presidential election, Adams endorsed Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. During that election, he wrote extensively on Trump, praising his persuasion skills, and later described his support for Trump as a factor in ending his public speaking career, as well as negatively affecting his income and friendships. He also spoke against Trump's opponent Hillary Clinton, expressing concerns that Clinton's candidacy would lower the status of men in America. In 2017, Adams described his views as supporting left-wing policies he perceived as realistic.

Adams made various predictions about politics. Early in the 2016 election, Adams predicted Trump would win based on his analysis of how persuasive the candidates were. As Trump gained momentum, Adams's election analysis gained media and popular attention. Later, these predictions repeatedly featured in Politico magazine's annual list of "Worst Predictions", including that either one of Trump, Bernie Sanders, or Joe Biden would die from COVID-19 by the end of 2020, that "Republicans will be hunted" if Biden won the 2020 presidential election, and that the 2024 presidential election would be ultimately overturned in Trump's favor by the U.S. Supreme Court regardless of outcome.

After the 2022 Highland Park parade shooting, Adams, then 65, opined that society leaves parents of troubled teenage boys with only two options: to either watch people die or murder their own son. He said his comments were inspired by his own stepson, who became addicted to drugs at age 14 and later died of a fentanyl overdose. Adams was anti-masking and believed that people unvaccinated against COVID-19 "came out the best" compared to vaccinated people, which PolitiFact determined to be incorrect.

In a 2006 blog post, Adams asked if official figures of the number of deaths in the Holocaust were based on methodologically sound research. In 2023, Adams suggested the 2017 Unite the Right rally was "an American intel op against Trump". In 2020, Adams said that the Dilbert TV show was canceled because he was white and UPN had decided to focus on an African-American audience, and that he had been discriminated against. In a series of comic strips in September 2022, Dilbert parodied environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) strategies. Part of the plotline involved a black character who "identif[ied] as white" and the company management asking him if he could also identify as gay.

Adams married Shelly Miles aboard a yacht, the Galaxy Commodore, on July 22, 2006, when he was 49, in San Francisco Bay, in a ceremony conducted by the ship's captain. The two had met at a gym in Pleasanton, California, where Shelly was an employee and Adams was a customer. Adams was a stepfather to Shelly's two children, Savannah and Justin, the latter of whom died of a fentanyl overdose in 2018 at age 18. Adams and Shelly divorced in 2014, and Adams said the two remained friends, with Shelly moving a block away after their separation.

On Christmas Day in 2019, Adams announced on his podcast that he was engaged to Kristina Basham, and later said that they married on July 11, 2020, a month and three days after his 63rd birthday. Basham, a model and baker, had two daughters and served as a vice-president at WhenHub. On March 10, 2022, Adams, then 64, announced on his YouTube podcast that he and Basham were getting divorced.

In the early 1990s, the pinky finger of Adams's right hand would spasm when he tried to draw, and he was diagnosed with focal dystonia. He said he cured himself by doing a conditioning exercise. In late 2004, when he was 47, his focal dystonia returned, which affected his ability to draw for lengthy periods. Beginning in 2014, he drew on a graphics tablet, and had subsequently switched from using his right hand to his left. He also had spasmodic dysphonia, a condition that causes the vocal cords to behave abnormally. In July 2008, aged 51, he underwent surgery to reroute the nerve connections to his vocal cords and his voice functionality improved.

Adams announced on his daily podcast Real Coffee with Scott Adams in May 2025 at the age of 67 that he was diagnosed with stage IV prostate cancer which spread to his bones. He noted that taking ivermectin and fenbendazole to treat the cancer did not work. In June, he had prepared for physician-assisted suicide through the California End of Life Option Act, and had planned to go through with it after his stepdaughter's wedding at the end of the month, as the pain was too much to handle. At this point, he began taking testosterone blocker pills which caused his pain to abate. This medication was suggested initially but Adams had declined this treatment. This medication dropped his prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels by 90%, which he said would prolong his life by between weeks and years.

In the autumn of 2025, Adams asked Trump on social media for access to the cancer drug Pluvicto due to the rapid progression of his cancer. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. replied saying "How do I reach you? The President wants to help." While undergoing radiation therapy for the cancer, he was eventually paralyzed below the waist. Adams disclosed on Real Coffee in January 2026 about his ongoing heart failure diagnosis as well as the low chances of recovering from the cancer. He died while under hospice care at his Pleasanton home on January 13, 2026, at the age of 68. Trump would post on his Truth Social platform later that day to give his condolences to his family and thanked him for his support even when facing backlash from others.

Adams received recognition for his work, including the National Cartoonists Society Reuben Award and Newspaper Comic Strip Award for 1997 for his work on Dilbert. He was listed on the Thinkers50 Ranking of the 50 most influential management thinkers, placing 31st in 2001, 27th in 2003, 12th in 2005, and 21st in 2007. He received the Orwell Award in 1998 for his participation in "Mission Impertinent" for San Jose Mercury News West Magazine.