How Many Light Bulbs Does It Take to Change the World?

Matt Ridley’s books have sold over a million copies, been translated into 31 languages and won several awards. They include The Red Queen, Genome, The Rational Optimist and The Evolution of Everything. Matt joined the House of Lords in February 2013 and has served on the science and technology select committee and the artificial intelligence committee. He was founding chairman of the International Centre for Life in Newcastle. He also created the Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal in 2010, and was a columnist for The Times from 2013 to 2018. Matt won the Free Enterprise Award from the Institute of Economic Affairs in 2014. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Steve Davies is Head of Education at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London. From 1979 until 2009 he was Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Economic History at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, and a programme officer at the Institute for Humane Studies in Arlington, Virginia. A historian, he graduated from St Andrews University in Scotland in 1976 and gained his PhD from the same institution in 1984. He was co-editor with Nigel Ashford of The Dictionary of Conservative and Libertarian Thought (Routledge 1991) and wrote several entries for The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism edited by Ronald Hamowy (Sage 2008), including the general introduction. He is also the author of Empiricism and History (Palgrave Macmillan 2003), The Wealth Explosion: The Nature and Origins of Modernity (Edward Everett Root 2019) and of several articles and essays on topics including the private provision of public goods and the history of crime and criminal justice.