Matt Ridley

How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom, 2020

Ridley wrote the majority of the main article of the August 2017 BBC Focus edition. The article explains his scepticism regarding resource depletion, challenging the widespread belief that resource depletion is an important issue. He cites various previous resource scares as his evidence.

Ridleys views on climate change have been criticised by Friends of the Earth because he has connections to the coal industry. He is the owner of land in the north east of England on which the Shotton Surface coal mine operates, and receives payments for the mine. In 2016 he was accused of lobbying for the coal industry. This was summarily dismissed by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.

Ridley is a Eurosceptic and advocated for the withdrawal (Brexit) of the UK from the European Union, during the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. He appeared in Brexit: The Movie, arguing for Britain to return to the policy of free trade that distinguished it after 1845 until the 1930s.

The Royal Agricultural Society of England awarded the Bledisloe Gold Medal in 2015 to Ridley for the work done on his Blagdon estate, saying that they "wanted to highlight the extensive environmental improvement work that has been undertaken across the land".

The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge, 2015

Ridley has consistently argued that the evidence suggests that carbon dioxide emissions are currently doing more good than harm, largely because of the CO2 fertilisation effect, which boosts crop growth and the growth of forests and wild vegetation, and that the best evidence suggests this will continue to be the case for many decades. In 2015 he wrote about a report by the independent scientist Indur Goklany as follows:

In 2015 Ridley's team won the celebrity Christmas special of University Challenge representing Magdalen College, Oxford, the year after the team of his son, also Matthew, had won the student version representing Trinity College, Cambridge.

On the topic of labels, you repeatedly call me a member of "the right". Again, on what grounds? I am not a reactionary in the sense of not wanting social change: I make this abundantly clear throughout my book. I am not a hierarchy lover in the sense of trusting the central authority of the state: quite the opposite. I am not a conservative who defends large monopolies, public or private: I celebrate the way competition causes creative destruction that benefits the consumer against the interest of entrenched producers. I do not preach what the rich want to hear—the rich want to hear the gospel of Monbiot, that technological change is bad, that the hoi polloi should stop clogging up airports, that expensive home-grown organic food is the way to go, that big business and big civil service should be in charge. So in what sense am I on the right? I am a social and economic liberal: I believe that economic liberty leads to greater opportunities for the poor to become less poor, which is why I am in favour of it. Market liberalism and social liberalism go hand in hand in my view.

In 2014, a Wall Street Journal op-ed written by Ridley was sharply challenged by Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University's Earth Institute. Sachs termed "absurd" Ridley's characterization of a paper in Science magazine by two scientists Xianyao Chen and Ka-Kit Tung. Sachs cited the data from the Science article to rebut Ridley's contentions, and stated that the "paper's conclusions are the very opposite of Ridley's". Ridley replied that 'it is ludicrous, nasty and false to accuse me of lying or "totally misrepresenting the science..I have asked Mr. Sachs to withdraw the charges more than once now on Twitter. He has refused to do so ...."'

Ridley is a libertarian, and a staunch supporter of Brexit. Since 2013, he has been a Conservative hereditary peer, with a seat in the House of Lords.

Since 2013 Ridley has written a weekly column for The Times on science, the environment, and economics.

In 2013, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and won the Julian L. Simon award in March 2012. In 2014 he won the free enterprise award from the Institute of Economic Affairs.

In 2012, Ridley became the 5th Viscount Ridley and Baron Wensleydale on the death of his father. He is also the 9th Baronet Ridley. In 2013, he was elected as hereditary peer in the House of Lords as a member of the Conservative Party.

When his father died in 2012, Ridley succeeded him as the 5th Viscount Ridley, having taken over the running of the family estate of Blagdon Hall, near Stannington, Northumberland, some years before.

Ridley summarised his own views on his political philosophy during the 2011 Hayek Lecture: "[T]hat the individual is not – and had not been for 120,000 years – able to support his lifestyle; that the key feature of trade is that it enables us to work for each other not just for ourselves; that there is nothing so anti-social (or impoverishing) as the pursuit of self sufficiency; and that authoritarian, top-down rule is not the source of order or progress."

In 2011, the Manhattan Institute awarded Ridley their $50,000 Hayek Prize for his book, The Rational Optimist. In his acceptance speech, Ridley said: "As Hayek understood, it is human collaboration that is necessary for society to work... the key feature of trade is that it enables us to work for each other not just for ourselves; that attempts at self-sufficiency are the true form of selfishness as well as the quick road to poverty; and that authoritarian, top-down rule is not the source of order or progress." In 2011, Ridley gave the Angus Millar Lecture on "scientific heresy" at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) .

From 2010 to 2013, Ridley wrote the weekly "Mind and Matter" column for The Wall Street Journal, which "explores the science of human nature and its implications".

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, 2010

Ridley's 2010 TED conference talk, "When Ideas Have Sex", received over 2 million views. Ridley argues that exchange and specialisation are the features of human society that lead to the development of new ideas, and that human society is therefore a "collective brain".

In 2007, the environmentalist George Monbiot wrote an article in The Guardian connecting Ridley's libertarian economic philosophy and the £27 billion failure of Northern Rock. On 1 June 2010 Monbiot followed up his previous article in the context of Matt Ridley's book The Rational Optimist, which had just been published. Monbiot took the view that Ridley had failed to learn from the collapse of Northern Rock.

Ridley has responded to Monbiot on his website, stating "George Monbiot's recent attack on me in the Guardian is misleading. I do not hate the state. In fact, my views are much more balanced than Monbiot's selective quotations imply." On 19 June 2010, Monbiot countered with another article on the Guardian website, further questioning Ridley's claims and his response. Ridley was then defended by Terence Kealey in a further article published on the Guardian website.

In November 2010, the Wall Street Journal published a lengthy exchange between Ridley and the Microsoft founder Bill Gates on topics discussed in Ridley's book The Rational Optimist. Gates said that "What Mr. Ridley fails to see is that worrying about the worst case—being pessimistic, to a degree—can actually help to drive a solution"; Ridley said "I am certainly not saying, 'Don't worry, be happy.' Rather, I'm saying, 'Don't despair, be ambitious.'"

In September 2007, Northern Rock became the first British bank since 1878 to suffer a run on its finances at the start of the financial crisis of 2007–2010. The bank applied to the Bank of England for emergency liquidity funding at the beginning of the financial crisis of 2007–08. but failed and Northern Rock was nationalized. He resigned as chairman in October 2007. A parliamentary committee criticised Ridley for not recognising the risks of the bank's financial strategy and "harming the reputation of the British banking industry".

Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code, 2006

In 2006, Ridley contributed a chapter to Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think, a collection of essays in honour of his friend Richard Dawkins (edited by his near-namesake Mark Ridley).

In a 2006 edition of the on-line magazine Edge – the third culture, Ridley wrote a response to the question "What's your dangerous idea?" which was entitled "Government is the problem not the solution", in which he describes his attitude to government regulation: "In every age and at every time there have been people who say we need more regulation, more government. Sometimes, they say we need it to protect exchange from corruption, to set the standards and police the rules, in which case they have a point, though often they exaggerate it... The dangerous idea we all need to learn is that the more we limit the growth of government, the better off we will all be."

Ridley was chairman of the UK bank Northern Rock from 2004 to 2007, during which period Northern Rock experienced the first run on a British bank in 150 years. Ridley resigned and the bank was bailed out by the UK government leading to the nationalisation of Northern Rock.

Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, & What Makes Us Human, 2003 (also later released under the title The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture in 2004)

In 2003 he received an honorary DSc degree from Buckingham University and in 2007, an honorary DCL degree from Newcastle University.

He had been a governor of the Ditchley Foundation, which organises conferences to further education and understanding of Britons and North Americans. He participated in a February 2000 Ditchley conference.

Dr Mathew Ridley has made major contributions to public engagement with the biological sciences. He was one the founders and the first chairman of the Centre for Life in Newcastle which combines research, commercial application, schools education, ethical debate and a pioneering interactive life-science exhibition, The Centre has attracted over half a million visitors since it opened in 2000 and has given more than 30,000 school children a taste of biology in "Lifelab", its school-age teaching lab. It has recently achieved a landmark with the creation of the first embryonic stem cell line. Ridely is well known for his popular books and extensive writings about biological sciences. His book "Genome: the autobiography of a species in 23 chapters" had sold over half a million copies and his "Nature via Nurture: genes, experience and what make us human" recasts the nature-nurture debate and argues that nurture works through genes as much as nature does. He is a profound influence on biomedical science and society.

Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, 1999

From 1996 to 2003, Ridley served as founding chairman of the International Centre for Life, which opened in 2000 as a non-profit science centre in Newcastle upon Tyne; and is now its honorary life president. From July 2000 to June 2008, he was a non-executive director of PA Holdings Limited, with Victor Halberstadt.

The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation, 1996

In 1996, he was a visiting professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, and in 2006 was awarded an honorary DSc degree.

In 1994 Ridley became a board member of the UK bank Northern Rock after his father had been a board member for 30 years and chairman from 1987 to 1992. Ridley became chairman in 2004.

The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, 1993

In 1989, Ridley married Anya Hurlbert, a Professor of Neuroscience at Newcastle University; they live in northern England and have a son and a daughter.

Ridley joined The Economist in 1984, first working as a science editor until 1987, then as Washington, D.C. correspondent from 1987 to 1989 and as American editor from 1990 to 1992. He was a columnist for The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph and an editor of The Best American Science Writing 2002.

In 1980, his sister Rose married the British Conservative Party politician Owen Paterson, who held the posts of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs until July 2014. During this time Ridley was described as 'in many ways Paterson's personal think tank'.

Ridley attended Eton College from 1970 to 1975 and then went on to Magdalen College, Oxford, to study zoology. Obtaining a BA degree with first class honours, Ridley continued with research on the mating system of the common pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) supervised by Chris Perrins for his DPhil degree in 1983.

Matthew White Ridley, 5th Viscount Ridley DL FRSL FMedSci (born 7 February 1958) is a British journalist and businessman. Ridley is best known for his writings on science, the environment, and economics. He has written several science books including The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (1994), Genome (1999), The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (2010) and The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge (2015). He publishes a blog, and has been a regular contributor to The Times newspaper.

Ridley's parents were Matthew White Ridley, 4th Viscount Ridley (1925–2012), and Lady Anne Katharine Gabrielle Lumley (1928–2006), the daughter of Lawrence Roger Lumley, 11th Earl of Scarbrough. He is the nephew of the late Conservative MP and minister Nicholas Ridley and the great grandson of Edwin Lutyens.