Jared Mason Diamond (born September 10, 1937)
is an American geographer, historian, 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.
== Early life and education ==
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.
== Career ==
After graduating from Cambridge, Diamond returned
to Harvard as a Junior Fellow until 1965,
and, in 1968, became a professor of physiology
at UCLA Medical School.
While in his twenties he developed a second,
parallel, career in ornithology and ecology,
specialising in New Guinea and nearby islands.
Later, in his fifties, Diamond developed a
third career in environmental history and
became a professor of geography at UCLA, his
current position.
He also teaches at LUISS Guido Carli in Rome.
He won the National Medal of Science in 1999
and Westfield State University granted him
an honorary doctorate in 2009.
Diamond originally specialized in salt absorption
in the gall bladder.
He has also published scholarly works in the
fields of ecology and ornithology, but is
arguably best known for authoring a number
of popular-science books combining topics
from diverse fields other than those he has
formally studied.
Because of this academic diversity, Diamond
has been described as a polymath.
== Popular science works ==
=== The Third Chimpanzee (1991) ===
Diamond's first popular book, The Third Chimpanzee:
The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal
(1991), examines human evolution and its relevance
to the modern world, incorporating evidence
from anthropology, evolutionary biology, genetics,
ecology, and linguistics.
The book traces how humans evolved to be so
different from other animals, despite sharing
over 98% of our DNA with our closest animal
relatives, the chimpanzees.
The book also examines the animal origins
of language, art, agriculture, smoking and
drug use, and other apparently uniquely human
attributes.
It was well received by critics and won the
1992 Rhône-Poulenc Prize for Science Books
and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
=== Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) ===
His second and best known popular science
book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of
Human Societies, was published in 1997.
It asks why Eurasian peoples conquered or
displaced Native Americans, Australians, and
Africans, instead of vice versa.
It argues that this outcome was not due to
biological advantages of Eurasian peoples
themselves but instead to features of the
Eurasian continent, in particular, its high
diversity of wild plant and animal species
suitable for domestication and its east/west
major axis that favored the spread of those
domesticates, people, and technologies for
long distances with little change in latitude.
The first part of the book focuses on reasons
why only a few species of wild plants and
animals proved suitable for domestication.
The second part discusses how local food production
based on those domesticates led to the development
of dense and stratified human populations,
writing, centralized political organization,
and epidemic infectious diseases.
The third part compares the development of
food production and of human societies among
different continents and world regions.
Guns, Germs, and Steel became an international
best-seller, was translated into 33 languages,
and received several awards, including a Pulitzer
Prize, an Aventis Prize for Science Books
and the 1997 Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science.
A television documentary series based on the
book was produced by the National Geographic
Society in 2005.
=== Why is Sex Fun?
(1997) ===
In his third book, Why is Sex Fun?, also published
in 1997, Diamond discusses evolutionary factors
underlying features of human sexuality that
are generally taken for granted but that are
highly unusual among our animal relatives.
Those features include a long-term pair relationship
(marriage), coexistence of economically cooperating
pairs within a shared communal territory,
provision of parental care by fathers as well
as by mothers, having sex in private rather
than in public, concealed ovulation, female
sexual receptivity encompassing most of the
menstrual cycle (including days of infertility),
female but not male menopause, and distinctive
secondary sexual characteristics.
=== Collapse (2005) ===
Diamond's next book, Collapse: How Societies
Choose to Fail or Succeed, published in 2005,
examines a range of past societies in an attempt
to identify why they either collapsed or continued
to thrive and considers what contemporary
societies can learn from these historical
examples.
As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, he argues against
explanations for the failure of past societies
based primarily on cultural factors, instead
focusing on ecology.
Among the societies mentioned in the book
are the Norse and Inuit of Greenland, the
Maya, the Anasazi, the indigenous people of
Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Japan, Haiti, the
Dominican Republic, and modern Montana.
The book concludes by asking why some societies
make disastrous decisions, how big businesses
affect the environment, what our principal
environmental problems are today, and what
individuals can do about those problems.
Like Guns, Germs, and Steel, Collapse was
translated into dozens of languages, became
an international best-seller, and was the
basis of a television documentary produced
by the National Geographic Society.
It was also nominated for the Royal Society
Prize for Science Books.
=== "Vengeance is Ours" controversy (2008)
===
In 2008, Diamond published an article in The
New Yorker entitled "Vengeance Is Ours", describing
the role of revenge in tribal warfare in Papua
New Guinea.
A year later two indigenous people mentioned
in the article filed a lawsuit against Diamond
and The New Yorker claiming the article defamed
them.
In 2013, The Observer reported that the lawsuit
"was withdrawn by mutual consent after the
sudden death of their lawyer."
=== 
Natural Experiments in History (2010) ===
In 2010, Diamond co-edited (with James Robinson)
Natural Experiments of History, a collection
of seven case studies illustrating the multidisciplinary
and comparative approach to the study of history
that he advocates.
The book’s title stems from the fact that
it is not possible to study history by the
preferred methods of the laboratory sciences,
i.e., by controlled experiments comparing
replicated human societies as if they were
test tubes of bacteria.
Instead, one must look at natural experiments
in which human societies that are similar
in many respects have been historically perturbed,
either by different starting conditions or
by different impacts.
The book’s afterword classifies natural
experiments, discusses the practical difficulties
of studying them, and offers suggestions on
how to address those difficulties.
=== The World Until Yesterday (2012) ===
Diamond's most recent book, The World Until
Yesterday, published in 2012, asks what the
western world can learn from traditional societies.
It surveys 39 traditional small-scale societies
of farmers and hunter-gatherers with respect
to how they deal with universal human problems.
The problems discussed include dividing space,
resolving disputes, bringing up children,
treatment of elders, dealing with dangers,
formulating religions, learning multiple languages,
and remaining healthy.
The book suggests that some practices of traditional
societies could be usefully adopted in the
modern industrial world today, either by individuals
or else by society as a whole.
== Personal life ==
Diamond is married to Marie Cohen, granddaughter
of Polish politician Edward Werner.
They have twin sons, born in 1987.
== Boards ==
Editorial board of the Skeptic Magazine, a
publication of The Skeptics Society.
Member of the American Philosophical Society.
Member of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences.
Member of the National Academy of Sciences.
US regional director of the World Wide Fund
for Nature.
== Awards and honors ==
Zaglossus bartoni diamondi was named in honor
of Jared Diamond.
== Selected bibliography ==
1992: The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution
and Future of the Human Animal (ISBN 0-06-098403-1-).
1997: Why Is Sex Fun?
(ISBN 0-465-03127-7-).
1997: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of
Human Societies (ISBN 978-0-099-30278-0).
Also published with the title Guns, germs
and steel: A short history of everybody for
the last 13,000 years (ISBN 978-0099302780).
2005: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail
or Succeed (ISBN 978-0241958681).
2010: Natural Experiments of History, with
James A. Robinson (ISBN 0-674-03557-7).
2012: The World until Yesterday: What Can
We Learn from Traditional Societies?
(ISBN 978-0141024486).
2015: The Third Chimpanzee for Young People:
The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal
(ISBN 9781609806118).
== See also ==
Assembly rules
Comparative history
Environmental determinism
List of important publications in anthropology
Arnold J. Toynbee
== References ==
== External links ==
Personal website
Diamond's page at the UCLA Department of Geography
UCLA Spotlight – Jared Diamond
Jared Diamond with bio, conversations, podcasts
at The Third Culture, (Edge Foundation)
Jared Diamond at TED
Jared Diamond: Why do societies collapse?
(TED2003)
Jared Diamond: How societies can grow old
better (TED2013)
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or
Succeed at The Earth Institute at Columbia
University, April 2007
The Evolution of Religions on YouTube at the
Center for Religion and Civic Culture, University
of Southern California
PBS – Guns, Germs and Steel at PBS (with
full transcripts)
What can we learn from traditional societies?
at Royal Institution, October 2013
Hammer Conversation with Jared Diamond and
John Long, Hammer Museum, March 16, 2010
Interview with Charlie Rose
Interview with Jared Diamond and James A.
Robinson about Natural Experiments of History
at New Books in History
Jared Diamond on IMDb
