Matt Ridley

Matt Ridley is one of the preeminent writers today, influential in many areas, and highly respected for his evidence-based exploration of topics such as genetics, economics, and science. He has written several award-winning books, mostly for adults, on a range of topics, ranging from environmentalism to the evolutionary origins of human behavior.

Ridley began writing as a journalist, first for the Sunday Telegraph and then for The Economist. He then went on to become the science editor of The Economist, a role he held from 1984 to 1989. It was during his time at The Economist that his writing began to reflect his naturalist interest in science, including a widely acclaimed series of articles about genetics, for which he eventually won the Royal Society of Literature Award in 1991.

Ridley has since gone on to write more than 10 books, all of them popularly and critically acclaimed. His first book, The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (1994), explored evolutionary theory and its influence on the behavior and psychology of humans. Ridley argued that rather than a unitary concept of human nature, human behavior is more best characterized by the idea of "evolve or die." It is a concept he would go on to explore further in his next book, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters (1999), which sold more than one million copies in 23 different languages.

In Genome, Ridley argued that modern genes are shaped by a combination of evolutionary forces that have taken place over millions of years. With this book, he turned popular attention to the study of genetics, a field that had become a hot topic in the late nineties, shortly after the Human Genome Project had finished its famous sequencing of the first human DNA.

Since then, Ridley has gone on to write numerous non-fiction books, such as The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (2010), The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge (2015), and What Technology Wants (2011). His books have been translated into more than 30 languages and remain popular among adults, as well as in university courses.

Ridley is now a bestselling author, and his work has been featured in several acclaimed podcasts, such as "Futurology" and "The Future of Everything." He writes a regular column in The Times and also serves on the board of the International Red Cross.

In short, Matt Ridley is one of today’s most important authors in science and technology, with a thought-provoking and informative body of work. His books, especially Genome and The Evolution of Everything, are must-reads for those interested in our biological and technological future.