Matt Ridley’s books have sold nearly two million copies, been translated into 31 languages and won several awards. His books are Warts and All, The Red Queen, The Origins of Virtue, Genome, Nature via Nurture, Francis Crick, The Rational Optimist, The Evolution of Everything, How Innovation Works, Viral and Birds, Sex and Beauty
He has been a weekly columnist for the Telegraph, The Times (London) and the Wall Street Journal. He writes regularly in The Spectator, The Telegraph, the Daily Mail, Spiked and other publications. His TED talk “When Ideas Have Sex” has been viewed more than two million times.
He served in the House of Lords from 2013 to 2021, sitting on the science and technology select committee and the artificial intelligence select committee.
With BA and DPhil degrees from Oxford University, Matt Ridley worked for the Economist for nine years as science editor, Washington correspondent and American editor, before becoming a self-employed writer and businessman based in Newcastle.
He was founding chairman of the International Centre for Life in Newcastle. He was non-executive chairman of Northern Rock plc and Northern 2 VCT plc. He also commissioned the Northumberlandia landform sculpture and country park.
He won the Hayek Prize in 2011, the Julian Simon award in 2012 and the Free Enterprise Award from the Institute of Economic Affairs in 2014. Two of his books were short-listed for the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is honorary president of the International Centre for Life in Newcastle. He has honorary doctorates from Buckingham University, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and University Francisco Marroquin, Guatemala. He serves on the advisory board of the Prosperity Institute.
He is married to the neuroscientist Professor Anya Hurlbert.
They have two children and live in Northumberland in the north of England.
His latest book is Birds Sex and Beauty Birds, Sex and Beauty
In his various books he has argued that:
Evolution consists of arms races in which you run to stay in the same place (The Red Queen)
Co-operation and virtue are just as deep rooted in human nature as selfishness (The Origins of Virtue)
Reading the genome makes us the first creature in 3 billion years to know its own recipe (Genome). Genome was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson prize.
Gene expression is at the mercy of experience, which explains why nature and nurture are indivisible (Nature via Nurture)
Francis Crick was instrumental in the discovery that life is a 4-letter code (Francis Crick)
Human living standards will continue rising thanks to ideas having sex (The Rational Optimist). The Rational Optimist was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson prize.
Human society changes more by evolutionary means than by command and control (The Evolution of Everything).
Innovation is a transformative human activity that depends on trial and error and the exchange of ideas (How Innovation Works)
Covid may well have started as a result of a leak from a highly unwise series of experiments in a laboratory in Wuhan (Viral with Alina Chan).
Sexual selection by mate choice is a powerful evolutionary force quite distinct from natural selection and capable of generating beauty for its own sake (Birds, Sex and Beauty).
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