Matt Ridley received his BA and D Phil at Oxford researching the evolution of behaviour. He has been science editor, Washington correspondent and American editor of The Economist. He has a regular column in the Daily Telegraph. He is also the author of The Red Queen (1993), The Origins of Virtue (1996) and Genome (1999). Matt Ridley is currently the chairman of The International Centre for Life.
'The result is a viral whodunnit that is sure to appeal to armchair detectives' Mark Honigsbaum, the Observer 'The book collates a series of circumstantial but damning points in favour of the lab-leak hypothesis. It opens with a cloak-and-dagger scene of a BBC reporter trying to reach a mine in Mojiang, a rural area in southwest China... The book has dozens of tantalising facts ... The book, fairly, does not conclude that the lab leak hypothesis is definitely true, merely that it is highly possible, and I agree... I hope the questions that Chan and Ridley raise are answered more fully, one way or another' Tom Chivers, The Times Praise for Dr Alina Chan: 'Both journalists and armchair detectives interested in the mystery of the coronavirus were discovering Chan as a kind of Holmes to our Watson. She crunched information at twice our speed, zeroing in on small details we'd overlooked, and became a go-to for anyone looking for spin-free explications of the latest science on Covid-19' Rowan Jacobsen, Boston Magazine 'Here was an actual scientist at America's biggest gene centre who was explaining why the official story might be wrong' Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review Praise for Matt Ridley: 'What a superb writer he is, and he seems to get better and better' Richard Dawkins '[Genome is] a dazzling work of popular science, offering clarity and inspiration' Guardian '[How Innovation Works] ranges from the truly profound to the merely fascinating' Steven Pinker