Journalist, businessman and author of popular science books, such as The Evolution of Everything and The Rational Optimist. He was chairman of the UK bank Northern Rock from 2004 to 2007. Ridley has a famous TED talk titled «When Ideas Have Sex» , that has been viewed more than two million times. As Viscount Ridley, he was elected to the House of Lords in February 2013. He currently writes a weekly column in The Times and writes regularly for the Wall Street Journal.