About Jared Diamond
Jared Mason Diamond (born September 10, 1937) is an American scientist, historian, and author. He has written hundreds of scientific and popular articles and books, most notably Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), which received multiple awards, including the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. In 2005, Diamond was ranked ninth on a poll by Prospect and Foreign Policy of the world's top 100 public intellectuals. Originally trained in biochemistry and physiology, Diamond has published in many fields, including anthropology, ecology, geography, and evolutionary biology. In 1985, he received a MacArthur Genius Grant and in 1999, the National Medal of Science, an honor bestowed by the President of the United States and the National Science Foundation. He was a professor of geography at UCLA until his retirement in 2024. Anthropologists have criticized his work as “shallow,” saying he overemphasizes geography and climate. He won the National Medal of Science in 1999. After graduation from Cambridge, Diamond returned to Harvard as a Junior Fellow until 1965, and, in 1968, became a professor of physiology at UCLA Medical School. Later, in his fifties, Diamond developed a third career in environmental history and became a professor of geography at UCLA, his current position.
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