Matt Ridley

Matt Ridley is the author of The Origins of Virtue, The Rational Optimist and The Evolution of Everything, among others. Ridley’s books have sold over a million copies, been translated into 31 languages and won several awards. His TED talk When Ideas Have Sex has been viewed more than two million times. He holds a BA and DPhil degrees from Oxford University. As Viscount Ridley, he was elected to the House of Lords in February 2013. He served on the Science and Technology select committee 2014-2017.

He was founding chairman of the International Centre for Life in Newcastle and its current honorary president. He was non-executive chairman of Northern Rock plc and Northern 2 VCT plc. He founded the “Mind and Matter” column in the Wall Street Journal and has been a weekly columnist for The Telegraph and The Times. 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. He has honorary doctorates from Buckingham University, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and University Francisco Marroquin, Guatemala.