Anya Hurlbert and Matt Ridley. [interview

Matt Ridley, the science writer, is married to Anya Hurlbert, reader in visual neuroscience at the University of Newcastle. She studied physics at Princeton University as an undergraduate, then went to Cambridge University as a Marshall Scholar, where she took a Part III diploma in theoretical physics and an MA in physiology. She returned to the States to do the HST MD-PhD program at Harvard-MIT, studying with Tomaso Poggio for her PhD. Matt trained as a zoologist at Oxford, and after completing his PhD on the mating habits of the pheasant, turned to journalism. They met when, as science editor for The Economist, Matt interviewed Anya, and they married while he was the magazine's Washington correspondent. They moved to England, she to Oxford for postdoctoral research, he to become American editor of The Economist. After writing as a columnist for the Daily Telegraph and other papers, Matt turned to writing books: his titles include The Red Queen, The Origins of Virtue, Genome and Nature via Nurture. They now live in rural Northumberland with their two children.