Matt Ridley

Ridley's parents were Matthew White Ridley, 4th Viscount Ridley (1925–2012), and Lady Anne Katharine Gabrielle Lumley (1928–2006), the daughter of Roger Lumley, 11th Earl of Scarbrough.

He is the nephew of the late Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) and minister Nicholas Ridley and the great grandson of Edwin Lutyens.

Matthew White Ridley, 5th Viscount Ridley, (born 7 February 1958), is a British science writer, journalist and businessman.

He is known for his writings on science, the environment, and economics and has been a regular contributor to The Times newspaper.

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 Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1983.

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.

His father had been a board member for 30 years, and chairman from 1987 to 1992.

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

In 1994, Ridley became a board member of the UK bank Northern Rock.

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.

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

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

From July 2000 to June 2008, he was a non-executive director of PA Holdings Limited, with Victor Halberstadt.

He participated in a February 2000 Ditchley conference.

The Banks Group and Blagdon estate developed and sponsored the construction of Northumberlandia, or the Lady of the North, a land sculpture in the shape of a reclining female figure, which was part-commissioned and sponsored by Ridley.

Now run by a charity group called the Land Trust, it is the largest landform in the world depicting the human form, and, through private funding, cost £3m to build.

Attracting over 100,000 people per year, the Northumberland art project, tourism and cultural landmark has won a global landscape architecture award, and has been named 'Miss World'.

He was a columnist for The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph and an editor of The Best American Science Writing 2002.

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)

Ridley was chairman of the UK bank Northern Rock from 2004 to 2007, during which period it experienced the first run on a British bank in 130 years.

He resigned, and the bank was bailed out by the UK government; this led to its nationalisation.

Ridley is a libertarian, and a staunch supporter of Brexit.

Ridley became chairman in 2004.

The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture, 2004

Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code, 2006

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 nationalised.

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".

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".

Until 2010, he was a governor of the Ditchley Foundation, which organises conferences to further education and understanding of Britons and North Americans.

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, 2010

He inherited the viscountcy in February 2012 and was a Conservative hereditary peer from February 2013, with an elected seat in the House of Lords, until his retirement in December 2021.

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

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 it "wanted to highlight the extensive environmental improvement work that has been undertaken across the land".

Ridley has written a number of popular science books, listed below.

Ridley wrote the majority of the main article of the August 2017 edition of BBC Focus magazine.

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.