He appeared in "", arguing for Britain to return to the policy of free trade that distinguished it after 1845 until the 1930s. In 1996, he was a visiting professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, and in 2006 was awarded an honorary DSc degree. In 2003, he received an honorary DSc degree from Buckingham University and in 2007, an honorary DCL degree from Newcastle University. In 2011, the Manhattan Institute awarded Ridley its $50,000 Hayek Prize for his book "The Rational Optimist". In his acceptance speech, Ridley said: "As Hayek understood, it is human collaboration that is necessary for society to work... the key feature of trade is that it enables us to work for each other not just for ourselves; that attempts at self-sufficiency are the true form of selfishness as well as the quick road to poverty; and that authoritarian, top-down rule is not the source of order or progress." In 2011, Ridley gave the Angus Millar Lecture on "scientific heresy" at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). In 2012, on the death of his father, Ridley became the 5th Viscount Ridley and Baron Wensleydale. He is also the 9th Baronet Ridley. In 2013, he was elected as a hereditary peer to membership in the House of Lords, as a member of the Conservative Party. In 2013, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and won the Julian L. Simon award in March 2012. In 2014, he won the free enterprise award from the Institute of Economic Affairs. His nomination to become a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) reads:  As 5th Viscount Ridley, Matt Ridley bears arms blazoned as "Gules on a Chevron Argent between three Falcons proper, as many Pellets". When his father died in 2012, Ridley succeeded him as the 5th Viscount Ridley, having taken over the running of the family estate of Blagdon Hall, near Stannington, Northumberland, some years before. In 1989, Ridley married Anya Hurlbert, a Professor of Neuroscience at Newcastle University; they live in northern England and have a son and a daughter. In 1980, his sister Rose married the British Conservative Party politician Owen Paterson, who held the posts of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs until July 2014. During this time Ridley was described as 'in many ways Paterson's personal think tank'.