Matt Ridley FRSL FMedSci

Science writer and Chairman of the International Centre for Life

Matt Ridley was born in 1958 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and educated at Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took a first in Zoology. He has been a scientist, a journalist, and a national newspaper columnist, writing for the Sunday Telegraph, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Literary Review, New Scientist, Prospect, New Statesman, Time, Newsweek, and many other publications. He is also a visiting professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York , and is chairman of the International Centre for Life, Newcastle-upon-Tyne’s science park and visitor centre devoted to life science.

His books include: Warts and All (Penguin, 1989); The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (Penguin, 1993); The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation(Penguin, 1996); Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters (4th Estate, 1999); Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human (Harper Collins, 2003); and Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code (Harper Collins, 2006). In February 2007, he gave the annual Humanists UK Darwin Day lecture, on “Francis Crick’s place in history”.

His work has been widely recognised and honoured. Hs books have been short-listed for many literary awards, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (1999) and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2003). He has been awarded a Honorary doctorate of science by Buckingham University and an Honorary Fellowship by Magdalen College, Oxford.

See also
Matt Ridley’s website
An interview about his book Genome and the opportunities and moral challenges the Human Genome Initiative presents to society at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june00/genome_2-29.html
Matt Ridley in The Guardian, 3/4/03, "We've never had it so good - and it's all thanks to science
Biography page on Edge.org