Jared Diamond

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Lore & Background

Jared Diamond was born on September 10, 1937 in Boston, Massachusetts. His parents were both Eastern European Jewish immigrants. His father, Louis Diamond, was a physician who emigrated from Chișinău in present-day Moldova, then known as Bessarabia. His mother, Flora née Kaplan, was a teacher, linguist, and concert pianist. Diamond began studying piano at age six; years later, he would propose to his wife after playing Brahms' Intermezzo in A major for her. By the age of seven he developed an interest in birdwatching. He attended the Roxbury Latin School and studied biochemical sciences at Harvard College, graduating in 1958. He later studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and graduated from Cambridge with a Ph.D. in 1961; his thesis was on the physiology and biophysics of membranes in the gallbladder. 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. While in his twenties he developed a second, parallel, career in ornithology and ecology, specialising in New Guinea and nearby islands, which he began visiting from 1964. 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 is a lecturer on the biodiversity management course at the European Institute of Innovation for Sustainability (EIIS) in Rome. He won the National Medal of Science in 1999. In 2005, Diamond was ranked ninth on a poll by *Prospect* and *Foreign Policy* of the world's top 100 public intellectuals. He gave two TED talks, "Why do societies collapse" (2008), and "How societies can grow old better" (2013).

Reader's Guide

Jared Diamond's significance lies in his popular science and history books that combine topics from diverse fields. His best known book, *Guns, Germs, and Steel* (1997), asks why Eurasian peoples conquered or displaced Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, and not the other way around. It argues that this outcome was due to features of the Eurasian continent, including its high diversity of wild plant and animal species suitable for domestication and its east/west major axis. The book became an international best-seller, was translated into 33 languages, and received several awards, including a Pulitzer Prize. A television documentary series based on the book was produced by the National Geographic Society in 2005. The book is controversial among anthropologists. Diamond's other popular books include *The Third Chimpanzee* (1991), which won the 1992 Rhône-Poulenc Prize for Science Books and the *Los Angeles Times* Book Prize; *Collapse* (2005), which examines why past societies collapsed and was also the basis of a National Geographic documentary; and *The World Until Yesterday* (2012). *Collapse* was nominated for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books. Fifteen archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and historians from the American Anthropological Association criticized Diamond's methods and conclusions, publishing the book *Questioning Collapse* as a counter. In response, Diamond, as an editor at the time for the journal *Nature*, published an official review negatively covering the book without mentioning it was a critique of his own work, drawing criticism for his conflict of interest. In 2008, Diamond published a *New Yorker* article, "Vengeance Is Ours," which led to a defamation lawsuit that was withdrawn by mutual consent in 2013 after the plaintiffs' lawyer died.

Did You Know?

• Diamond proposed to his wife after playing Brahms' Intermezzo in A major for her.
• He began studying piano at age six and developed an interest in birdwatching by age seven.
• His Ph.D. thesis was on the physiology and biophysics of membranes in the gallbladder.
• He received a MacArthur Genius Grant in 1985 and the National Medal of Science in 1999.
• In 2005, he was ranked ninth on a poll by *Prospect* and *Foreign Policy* of the world's top 100 public intellectuals.