Matt Ridley

Matt Ridley
Born	Matthew White Ridley (1958-02-07) 7 February 1958 Northumberland
Occupation	Author, journalist
Nationality	British

Matthew White Ridley, FRSL, FMedSci (born 7 February 1958, in Northumberland) is an English journalist, author, biologist, and businessman. He is best known as a writer of science books including the The Red Queen (1994), the best seller Genome (2000) and the controversial The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (2010). Ridley is one of only two people to have been short-listed twice for the prestigious Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction. In 2011, he won the Hayek Prize, which "honors the book published within the past two years that best reflects Hayek’s vision of economic and individual liberty." Ridley also gave the Angus Millar Lecture on "scientific heresy" at the RSA in 2011 and his TED.com talk on "when ideas have sex" was one of the sensations of the 2010 TED Global conference and has since had 1.3m visits on the web. Rupert Murdoch's first ever tweet was a recommendation of Ridley's The Rational Optimist.

Career

Ridley was educated at Eton College from 1970–1975 and then went on to Magdalen College of the University of Oxford and completed a Bachelor of Arts with first class honours in zoology and then a Doctor of Philosophy in zoology in 1983.

Ridley worked as the science editor of The Economist from 1984 to 1987 and was then its Washington correspondent from 1987 to 1989 and American editor from 1990 to 1992.

Ridley was non-executive chairman of the UK bank Northern Rock from 2004 to 2007, in the period leading up to the bank's near-collapse. He was also was founding chairman of the International Centre for Life, a non-profit science centre in Newcastle, UK, which has since become the largest provider of formally taught science workshops in Europe. He served as chairman for seven years. He formerly had been a governor of the Ditchley Foundation, which organises conferences at its stately home in Oxfordshire. He is a distinguished supporter of the British Humanist Association.

Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist (4th Estate) was shortlisted for the 2011 BBC Samuel Johnson prize.

Books

He is the author of several works of popular science:

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

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, Alice meets the Red Queen who runs everywhere but stays in the same place. This book champions a Red Queen theory for the evolution of sexual reproduction: that it was invented to keep changing the genetic locks so as to remain one step ahead of constantly mutating parasites. The Red Queen also addresses dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture – including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty, and why the human brain may be like the peacock’s tail – a seduction device.

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

In The Origins of Virtue, Ridley argues that the human mind has evolved a special instinct for social exchange that enables us to reap the benefits of co-operation, ostracise those who break the social contract and avoid the trap of being 'rational fools'. It traces the evolution of society first among genes, then among cells, then in ants, vampire bats, apes and dolphins, and finally among human beings. Along the way, it plays games with computers, traces the psychological roots of football riots, finds trade to be ten times as old as economists believe, compares dead mammoths to lighthouses, explains the evolution of human emotions and shows how to save the rain forest. In an interview with Foreign Policy magazine, former US President Bill Clinton named this book as one which had influenced his thinking.

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

The human genome, the complete set of genes in 23 pairs of chromosomes, is an 'autobiography' of our species. Spelled out in a billion three-letter words using the four-letter alphabet of DNA, the genome has been edited, abridged, altered and added to as it has been handed down, generation to generation, over more than three billion years. This generation is the first to read this book, and to gain hitherto unimaginable insights into what it means to be alive, to be human, to be conscious or to be ill. By picking one newly discovered gene from each of the 23 human chromosomes, and telling its story, Matt Ridley recounts the history of our species and its ancestors from the dawn of life to the brink of future medicine. James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, described the book as "lucid and exhilarating".

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

This book chronicles a new revolution in our understanding of genes, recounting the hundred years' war between the partisans of nature and nurture to explain how this paradoxical creature, the human being, can be simultaneously free-willed and motivated by instinct and culture. The emerging truth is far more interesting than a stale antithesis between heredity and environment. Nurture depends on genes, and genes need nurture. Genes not only predetermine the broad structure of the brain; through the pattern of their turning on and off they also absorb formative experiences, react to social cues and even run memory. They are consequences as well as causes of the will.

• 2006 Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code

Ridley's biography of Francis Crick won the Davis Prize for the history of science from the US History of Science Society.

Ridley also edited The Best American Science Writing 2002, one of a series of annual science writing anthologies edited by Jesse Cohen, and 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).

• 2010 The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, published by 4th Estate. Reviewed in Nature 465, 294–295 (20 May 2010). The Rational Optimist was shortlisted for the 2011 BBC Samuel Johnson prize.

Ridley creates a wide-ranging history of human society from early Hunter-gatherer groups into the early 21st century. He argues that human beings have an often underestimated capacity for change and social progress. From early on in human evolution, Ridley writes, trade and other kinds of exchanges between groups "gave the Species an external, collective intelligence" (Ridley 350). He continues with histories of socio-economic progress under free market capitalism and democratic civil institutions. He then dismisses what he sees as overly pessimistic views of global climate change and Western birthrate decline. The book contains numerous graphs depicting social changes, such as how world GDP per person grew from about $1,000 in 1900 to $6,000 in 2000.

Publications and articles

Ridley writes the weekly "Mind and Matter" column for the Wall Street Journal, which "explores the science of human nature and its implications". Recent writings include "Connecting the Pieces of the Alzheimer's Puzzle" and "Does a Different Nuclear Power Lie Ahead?".

• "Where Progress Comes From: Africa Needs Growth, Not Pity and Big Plans", The Wall Street Journal (27 November 2010)
• "Humans: Why They Triumphed", The Wall Street Journal (22 May 2010)
• "Why ban genetic modification?", Wired (UK) (20 January 2010)
• "Will history condemn Al Gore?", Wired (UK) (4 December 2009)
• "When Ideas Have Sex: The Role of Exchange in Cultural Evolution", Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology (23 September 2009)
• "Why are we all getting cleverer?", Wired (UK) (9 June 2009)
• "Robber barons got rich by making things cheaper", Wired (UK) (21 April 2009)
• "Darwin's Legacy", National Geographic (February 2009)
• "Bjorn Lomborg", Time Magazine (April 26, 2004)
• "What Makes You Who You Are", Time Magazine (May 25, 2003)
• "Will We Clone a Dinosaur?", Time Magazine (April 10, 2000)
• "Life's Twisted Plot Line", Time Magazine (February 28, 2000)
• "Will We Still Need to Have Sex?", Time Magazine (November 8, 1999)
• Down to Earth: A Contrarian View of Environmental Problems (collection of columns from the Sunday Telegraph), Institute of Economic Affairs (February 1995)
• Down to Earth II: Combating Environmental Myths (collection of columns from the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph and others), Institute of Economic Affairs (August 1997)
• "Can Selfishness Save the Environment?" (co-author), The Atlantic (September 2003)

Personal

He is the son and heir of Viscount Ridley, whose family estate is Blagdon Hall, near Cramlington, Northumberland. Ridley is married to the neuroscientist Anya Hurlbert and lives in northern England; he has a son and a daughter. He is a great grandson of the Victorian architect Sir Edwin Lutyens; the nephew of the late conservative Cabinet minister, Nicholas Ridley; and a first cousin, three times removed, of Sir Winston Churchill.

Northern Rock

Ridley was non-executive chairman of Northern Rock from 2004 to 2007, earning £300,000 a year, having joined the board in 1994. His father had been chairman from 1987 to 1992 and sat on the board for 30 years.

In September 2007 Northern Rock became the first British bank since 1878 to suffer a run on its finances at the start of the credit crunch. It was forced to apply to the Bank of England for emergency liquidity funding, following problems caused by the US subprime mortgage crisis. Matt Ridley resigned as chairman in October 2007, having been blamed in parliamentary committee hearings for not recognizing the risks of the bank's financial strategy and thereby "harming the reputation of the British banking industry."

Debate over Ridley's political philosophy

In a 2006 edition of the on-line magazine Edge published by the Edge foundation, 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."

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. In the same newspaper Terence Kealey defended libertarianism, arguing that the performance of the government's regulatory agencies confirmed scepticism about state intervention, because the government had crowded out the market's own regulatory mechanisms.

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.

In November 2010, the Wall Street Journal published a lengthy exchange between Ridley and Microsoft founder Bill Gates on topics discussed in Ridley's book The Rational Optimist.

Gates wrote:

Although I strongly disagree with what Mr. Ridley says in these pages about some of the critical issues facing the world today, his wider narrative is based on two ideas that are very important and powerful.

Those two ideas, said Gates, are that "the key to rising prosperity over the course of human history has been the exchange of goods" and "rational optimism...there have been constant predictions of a bleak future throughout human history, but they haven't come true." Gates went on to conclude

Development in Africa is difficult to achieve, but I am optimistic that it will accelerate. Science will come up with vaccines for AIDS and malaria, and the "top-down" approach to aid criticized by Mr. Ridley (and by the economist William Easterly) will fund the delivery of these life-saving drugs. 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 replied:

I am disappointed that Mr. Gates is so defensive about "top-down" aid. Just as everything from software design to education can benefit from bottom-up crowd sourcing in which elites no longer determine what happens, so surely humanitarian aid can benefit too, however much vested interests in governments and in big agencies dislike this trend.

Ridley then responsed to Gates:

Am I saying that we should cease worrying about trends that might cause problems? Of course not. I am arguing that we should worry about real problems, including Africa's plight, but that we should do so in the knowledge that we have solved many such problems before and can do so again. I am certainly not saying, "Don't worry, be happy." Rather, I'm saying, "Don't despair, be ambitious"—though I admit it's not nearly as snappy a song lyric.

Ridley recently 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. How exactly is all that “right wing”? How exactly is it conservative or reactionary to think human society works best through egalitarian sharing and mutual service, rather than through state control, hierarchy and planning?

In an email exchange, Ridley responded to environmental activist Mark Lynas' repeated charges of a right wing agenda with the following reply:

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.

External links

• Matt Ridley's website
• Treasury - Minutes of Evidence: Examination of Witnesses: Dr Matt Ridley, Chairman, Northern Rock
• Ridley interviewed for Massive Change Radio in January 2004
• Biography page on Edge.org
• Matt Ridley, "We've never had it so good - and it's all thanks to science," The Guardian, 3 April 2003. Article in newspaper.
• Matt Ridley, "What's your dangerous idea?"The Edge On-line magazine 2006
• Matt Ridley, "Darwin's Legacy", National Geographic, February 2009.
• Matt Ridley, "Putting Darwin in Genes", Thinking Digital, May 2009.
• Matt Ridley, 'When Ideas Have Sex', a video of his TED talk