Matt Ridley's Books

The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature
The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation
Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters
Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human
Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code

Eminent Lives
Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code

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Matt Ridley's response to Horace Freeland Judson's inaccurate review in "Nature"

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Francis Crick and LSD

"Matt Ridley’s FRANCIS CRICK perceptively and warmly recounts the extraordinary life of the twentieth century’s most important biologist."
— James D. Watson

"A briskly written essential for the DNA shelf . . . Ridley’s fluency in the pertinent molecular biology is refined by his stylistic clarity."
— Booklist

"This is a wonderful book--deeply substantive, lucid, trenchant, and witty. It tells the biggest story in modern biology."
— David Quammen

"Ridley’s thoughtful book aims less to unearth new facts than to highlight undervalued ones. He has found some new material..."
— The New York Times

"...'he was no stereotypical white-lab-coated humourless absent-minded professor', says biographer Matt Ridley"
— Bill Thompson's "Eye on books"

"Matt Ridley's biography of Francis Crick pays due tribute to one of the greatest scientists ever", says Robin McKie
— The Guardian

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

I am frequently asked for my opinion on the speculation that Francis Crick was on LSD when he discovered the double helix; or that he was involved with a man named Dick Kemp in the manufacture of LSD. These assertions were reported second hand in an article in the Mail on Sunday by Alun Rees following Crick's death and they have since gained a certain amount of traction on the internet. Both stories are wrong. The true story, which I was told directly by Crick's widow and by the man who (as his widow confirms) first supplied the Cricks with LSD, is much less sensational. Crick was given (not sold) LSD on several occasions from 1967 onwards by Henry Todd, who met the Cricks through his girlfriend. Todd did know Kemp, with whom he was eventually prosecuted, but the Cricks did not. As for the implausible idea that the then impoverished and conventional Crick would have had access to LSD when it was newly invented in the early 1950s, there is simply no evidence for it at all. Those who wish to argue that LSD helped Crick make discoveries should note that all his major breakthroughs in molecular biology were made before 1967.