Jared Diamond | |
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Born | Jared Mason Diamond September 10, 1937 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
Fields | Physiology, biophysics, ornithology, environmentalism, history, ecology, geography, evolutionary biology and anthropology |
Institutions | University of California, Los Angeles |
Education | Roxbury Latin School |
Alma mater | |
Thesis | Concentrating activity of the gall-bladder (1961) |
Influenced | Yuval Noah Harari |
Notable awards |
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Jared Mason Diamond (born September 10, 1937) is an American ecologist, geographer, biologist, anthropologist and author best known for his popular science books The Third Chimpanzee (1991); Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997, awarded a Pulitzer Prize); Collapse (2005); and The World Until Yesterday (2012). Originally trained in physiology, Diamond is known for drawing from a variety of fields, including anthropology, ecology, geography and evolutionary biology. He is a professor of geography at UCLA.
In 2005, Diamond was ranked ninth on a poll by Prospect and Foreign Policy of the world's top 100 public intellectuals.
Diamond was born in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Both of his parents were from East European Jewish families who had emigrated to the United States. His father, Louis Diamond, was a physician, and his mother, Flora Kaplan, a teacher, linguist, and concert pianist. Diamond himself began studying piano at age six; years later he would propose to his wife after playing the Brahms Intermezzo in A minor for her. He attended the Roxbury Latin School and earned a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology and history from Harvard College in 1958 and a PhD on the physiology and biophysics of membranes in the gall bladder from Trinity College, University of Cambridge in 1961.