All Topics  
Jared Diamond

 

 
   Email Print
   Bookmark   Link
 

 

Jared Diamond
 
 
  Topics Jared Diamond Topic Home

Jared Mason Diamond (born 10 September, 1937) is an American evolutionary biologist, physiologist, biogeographer
Biogeography

Biogeography is the study of the distribution of biodiversity over space and time. It aims to reveal where organisms live, and at what abundance....
, lecturer
Lecturer

Lecturer is a term of academic rank. In the United Kingdom lecturer is the name given to university teachers in their first permanent university position....
, and nonfiction author
Author

An author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created....
. Diamond works as a professor
Professor

The meaning of the word professor varies. In some English-speaking countries, it refers to a senior academic who holds a departmental chair, especially as head of the Academic department, or a personal chair awarded specifically to that individual....
 of geography
Geography

Geography is the study of the Earth and its lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth"....
 and physiology
Physiology

Physiology is the study of the mechanical, physical, and biochemical functions of living organisms. Physiology has traditionally been divided between plant physiology and animal and all living things physiology but the principles of physiology are universal, no matter what particular organism is being studied....
 at UCLA
University of California, Los Angeles

The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, California, United States....
. He is best known for the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is an United States award regarded as the highest national honor in newspaper journalism, literary achievements and musical composition....
-winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel
Guns, Germs, and Steel

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997 book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at University of California, Los Angeles....
 (1998), which also won the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science
Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science

The Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science is given annually by the Phi Beta Kappa Society to authors of significant books in the fields of science and mathematics....
, as well as for Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005). He received the National Medal of Science
National Medal of Science

The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral science and social sciences, biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics and physics....
 in 1999.

ond was born in Boston of Polish-Jewish heritage, to a physician
Physician

A physician, medical practitioner, doctor of medicine, or medical doctor practices medicine, and is concerned with maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease and injury....
 father and a teacher/musician/linguist mother.






Discussion
Ask a question about 'Jared Diamond'
Start a new discussion about 'Jared Diamond'
Answer questions from other users
Full Discussion Forum



Recent Posts

How does diamond refute the charge that Australia is proof that differences in the fates of human so...








Quotations


History, as well as life itself, is complicated; neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), p. 349





Encyclopedia


Jared Mason Diamond (born 10 September, 1937) is an American evolutionary biologist, physiologist, biogeographer
Biogeography

Biogeography is the study of the distribution of biodiversity over space and time. It aims to reveal where organisms live, and at what abundance....
, lecturer
Lecturer

Lecturer is a term of academic rank. In the United Kingdom lecturer is the name given to university teachers in their first permanent university position....
, and nonfiction author
Author

An author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created....
. Diamond works as a professor
Professor

The meaning of the word professor varies. In some English-speaking countries, it refers to a senior academic who holds a departmental chair, especially as head of the Academic department, or a personal chair awarded specifically to that individual....
 of geography
Geography

Geography is the study of the Earth and its lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth"....
 and physiology
Physiology

Physiology is the study of the mechanical, physical, and biochemical functions of living organisms. Physiology has traditionally been divided between plant physiology and animal and all living things physiology but the principles of physiology are universal, no matter what particular organism is being studied....
 at UCLA
University of California, Los Angeles

The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, California, United States....
. He is best known for the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is an United States award regarded as the highest national honor in newspaper journalism, literary achievements and musical composition....
-winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel
Guns, Germs, and Steel

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997 book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at University of California, Los Angeles....
 (1998), which also won the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science
Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science

The Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science is given annually by the Phi Beta Kappa Society to authors of significant books in the fields of science and mathematics....
, as well as for Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005). He received the National Medal of Science
National Medal of Science

The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral science and social sciences, biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics and physics....
 in 1999.

Biography

Diamond was born in Boston of Polish-Jewish heritage, to a physician
Physician

A physician, medical practitioner, doctor of medicine, or medical doctor practices medicine, and is concerned with maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease and injury....
 father and a teacher/musician/linguist mother. After attending the Roxbury Latin School
Roxbury Latin School

The Roxbury Latin School is the oldest school in continuous operation in North America. The school was originally founded in Roxbury, Massachusetts by the Rev....
, he earned an A.B. degree from Harvard College
Harvard College

Harvard College is the undergraduate section and oldest school of Harvard University, a private university in the United States founded in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature....
 in 1958 and his Ph.D.
Ph.D.

Ph.D. or PHD may stand for:* Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group* Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip...
 in physiology
Physiology

Physiology is the study of the mechanical, physical, and biochemical functions of living organisms. Physiology has traditionally been divided between plant physiology and animal and all living things physiology but the principles of physiology are universal, no matter what particular organism is being studied....
 and membrane biophysics
Biophysics

Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that employs and develops theories and methods of the physical sciences for the investigation of biology systems....
 from Cambridge University
University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge , located in Cambridge, England, is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation university in the Anglosphere....
 in 1961. During 1962-1966, he returned to Harvard as a Junior Fellow
Harvard Society of Fellows

The Harvard Society of Fellows is a collection of luminaries selected by Harvard University to be given special honors, upon whom distinctive academic and intellectual opportunities are bestowed....
. He became a professor of physiology at UCLA Medical School in 1966. While in his twenties, he also developed a second, parallel, career in the ecology and evolution of New Guinea
New Guinea

New Guinea, located just north of Australia, is the List of islands by area, having become separated from the Australian mainland when the area now known as the Torres Strait flooded after the last glacial period....
 birds, and has since led numerous trips to explore New Guinea and nearby islands. In his fifties, Diamond gradually developed a third career in environmental history, becoming a professor of geography and of environmental health sciences at UCLA, his current position.

Diamond speaks a dozen languages, listed in the order learned: English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
, Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
, French
French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
, Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
, German
German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
, Spanish
Spanish language

Spanish or Castilian is a Romance languages that originated in northern Spain, and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile and evolved into the principal language of government and trade....
, Russian
Russian language

Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe....
, Finnish
Finnish language

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by Finnish people outside of Finland. It is one of the official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden....
, Fore (a New Guinea language), New Melanesian
Tok Pisin

Tok Pisin is a creole language spoken throughout Papua New Guinea; in parts of Western, Gulf, Central, Oro and Milne Bay Provinces the use of Tok Pisin has a shorter history, and is less universal, especially among older people....
, Indonesian
Indonesian language

Indonesian is the official national language of Indonesia. It is based on a version of Malay language from the Riau islands in western Indonesia, today called Riau Indonesian....
, and Italian
Italian language

Italian is a Romance languages spoken by about 63 million people as a first language, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four Linguistic geography of Switzerlands....
.

Works

Diamond is the author of a number of popular science
Popular science

Popular science, sometimes called literature of science, is interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is broad-ranging, often written by scientists as well as journalists, and is presented in many formats, which can include books, televi...
 works that combine anthropology
Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humans and humanity in its totality. Anthropology has origins in the natural sciences, and the humanities. In Great Britain it was originally divided into physical anthropology and cultural anthropology, which itself was divided into archaeology, technology, ethnology and sociology ....
, biology
Biology

Biology is a branch of the natural sciences concerned with the study of living organisms and their interaction with each other and their environment ....
, ecology
Ecology

Ecology is the science study of the distribution and Abundance of life and the interactions between organisms and their nature environment ....
, linguistics
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
, genetics
Genetics

Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of heredity and Genetic variation in living organisms. The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been used since prehistoric times to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding....
, and history
HIStory

HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I is a double album by Michael Jackson, released on June 20, 1995, and is Jackson's ninth. The first disc, named "HIStory Begins" consists of a selection of Jackson's greatest hits from the singer's past fifteen years, while the second, named "HIStory Continues" features new songs, with the...
.

His best-known work is the non-fiction, Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is an United States award regarded as the highest national honor in newspaper journalism, literary achievements and musical composition....
-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel
Guns, Germs, and Steel

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997 book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at University of California, Los Angeles....
 (1997), which asserts that the main international issues of our time are legacies of processes that began during the early-modern period, in which civilizations that had experienced an extensive amount of "human development" began to intrude upon technologically less advanced civilizations around the world. Diamond's quest is to explain why Eurasia
Eurasia

Eurasia is a large landmass covering about 53,990,000 km? or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface . Often considered a single continent, Eurasia comprises the traditional continents of Europe and Asia, concepts which date back to classical antiquity and the borders for which are somewhat arbitrary....
n civilizations, as a whole, have survived and conquered others, while refuting the belief that Eurasian hegemony
Hegemony

Hegemony first denoted the dominance of a Greek city-state over other city-states, then denoted the dominance of one nation over others. The political scientist Antonio Gramsci developed the former conceptions to identify the dominance of one social class over the other social classes in a society by means of cultural hegemony....
 is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, genetic, or moral superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies do not reflect cultural or racial differences, but rather originate in environmental differences powerfully amplified by various positive feedback loops
Positive feedback

Positive feedback, sometimes referred to as "cumulative causation", is a feedback loop system in which the system responds to Perturbation of biological system in the same direction as the perturbation....
, and fills the book with examples throughout history. He identifies the main processes and factors of civilizational development that were present in Eurasia, from the origin of human beings in Africa to the proliferation of agriculture and technology.

In his following book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), Diamond examines a range of past civilizations and societies, attempting to identify why they collapsed into ruins or survived only in a massively reduced form. He considers what contemporary societies can learn from these societal collapses. As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, he argues against ethnocentric explanations for the collapses which he discusses, and focuses instead on ecological factors. He pays particular attention to the Norse settlements in Greenland
Norse colonization of the Americas

As early as the 10th century Norsemen sailors explored and settled areas of the North Atlantic, including the northeastern fringes of North America....
, which vanished as the climate got colder, while the surrounding Inuit
Inuit

Inuit is a general term for a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada, Greenland, Russia and Alaska, United States....
 culture thrived.

He also has chapters on the collapse of the Maya, Anasazi, and Easter Island
Easter Island

Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeastern most point of the Polynesian triangle. The island is a special territory of Chile....
 civilizations, among others. He cites five factors that often contribute to a collapse, but shows how the one factor that all had in common was mismanagement of natural resources. He follows this with chapters on prospering civilizations that managed their resources very well, such as Tikopia Island
Tikopia

Tikopia is a small and high island in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Covering an area of 5 km? , the island is the remnant of an extinct volcano....
 and Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
 under the Tokugawa Shogunate
Tokugawa shogunate

The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the , and the , was a feudalism regime of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family....
.

In Collapse, Diamond distances himself from the charges of "ecological or environmental determinism" that were leveled against him in Guns, Germs, and Steel . This is particularly evident in his chapter comparing Haiti
Haiti

Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Haitian Creole language- and French language-speaking Caribbean country. Along with the Dominican Republic, it occupies the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antilles archipelago....
 and the Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are List of divided islands, Saint Martin being the other....
, two nations that share the same island (and similar environments) but which pursued notably different futures, primarily on the strength of their differing histories, cultures, and leaders.

Diamond's books rely on fields as diverse as molecular biology
Molecular biology

Molecular biology is the study of biology at a molecule level. The field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly genetics and biochemistry....
, linguistics
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
, physiology
Physiology

Physiology is the study of the mechanical, physical, and biochemical functions of living organisms. Physiology has traditionally been divided between plant physiology and animal and all living things physiology but the principles of physiology are universal, no matter what particular organism is being studied....
, and archeology, as well as knowledge about typewriter
Typewriter

A typewriter is a Machine or electromechanical device with a set of "keys" that, when pressed, cause Typeface to be printed on a medium, usually paper....
 design and feudal Japan. Because of his broad expertise and the large number of articles credited to him, Mark Ridley
Mark Ridley (zoologist)

Mark Ridley is a Great Britain zoology and writer on evolution. He studied at both Oxford University and University of Cambridge in the 1980s, was a professor at Emory University, Atlanta, U.S.A., and - as of 2005 - works at the Department of Zoology, Oxford University....
 has suggested jokingly that Jared Diamond is not a single person, but instead "is really a committee."

Books

  • 1972 Avifauna of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea, Publications of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, No. 12, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 438.
  • 1975 M. L. Cody and J. M. Diamond, eds. . Belknap Press, Harvard University Press
    Harvard University Press

    Harvard University Press is a publishing house, a division of Harvard University, that is highly respected in academic publishing. It was established on January 13, 1913....
    , Cambridge, Mass.
  • 1979 J. M. Diamond and M. LeCroy. Birds of Karkar and Bagabag Islands, New Guinea. Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. 164:469-531
  • 1984 J. M. Diamond. The Avifaunas of Rennell and Bellona Islands. The Natural History of Rennell Islands, British Solomon Islands 8:127-168
  • 1986 J. M. Diamond and T. J. Case. eds. Community Ecology. Harper and Row, New York
  • 1986 B. Beehler, T. Pratt, D. Zimmerman, H. Bell, B. Finch, J. M. Diamond, and J. Coe. Birds of New Guinea. Princeton University Press,Princeton
  • 1992 The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal, ISBN 0-060-98403-1
  • 1997 Why is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality
    Why is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality

    Why is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality is a 1997 book by Jared Diamond dealing with the evolutionary development of human sexuality....
    , ISBN 0-465-03127-7
  • 1997 Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
    Guns, Germs, and Steel

    Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997 book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at University of California, Los Angeles....
    .     W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-393-06131-0
  • 2001 The Birds of Northern Melanesia: Speciation, Ecology, & Biogeography (with Ernst Mayr), ISBN 0-195-14170-9
  • 2003 Guns, Germs, and Steel Reader's Companion, ISBN 1-586-63863-7.
  • 2005 Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking Books. ISBN 1-586-63863-7.
  • 2006 [re-release] The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-060-84550-3.


Selected Articles

  • Island Biogeography and the Design of Natural Reserves (1976), in Robert M. May's Theoretical Ecology: Principles and Applications, Blackwell Scientific Publications, pp. 163-186.
  • Ethnic differences. Variation in human testis size. (April 1986) Nature
    Nature (journal)

    Nature is a prominent scientific journal, first published on 4 November 1869. Although most scientific journals are now highly specialized, Nature is one of the few journals, along with other weekly journals such as Science and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that still publishes original research articles ac...
     320(6062):488-489 .
  • (May 1987) Discover
    Discover (magazine)

    Discover is a science magazine that publishes articles about science for a general audience. The monthly magazine was launched in October 1980 by Time ....
     pp. 64-66
  • Curse and Blessing of the Ghetto (March 1991) Discover
    Discover (magazine)

    Discover is a science magazine that publishes articles about science for a general audience. The monthly magazine was launched in October 1980 by Time ....
    , pp.60-66
  • (November 1994) Discover
    Discover (magazine)

    Discover is a science magazine that publishes articles about science for a general audience. The monthly magazine was launched in October 1980 by Time ....
  • (April 1997) Discover
    Discover (magazine)

    Discover is a science magazine that publishes articles about science for a general audience. The monthly magazine was launched in October 1980 by Time ....
  • Japanese Roots (June 1998) Discover
    Discover (magazine)

    Discover is a science magazine that publishes articles about science for a general audience. The monthly magazine was launched in October 1980 by Time ....
  • (January 2, 2008) The New York Times
    The New York Times

    The New York Times is an American daily newspaper published in New York City. The largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States, "The Gray Lady"?named for its staid appearance and style?is regarded as a national newspaper of record....


Television

  • A three part, three hour 2005 PBS documentary called Guns, Germs and Steel based on his 1997 book of the same name originally aired between July 11-25, 2005.


Boards

  • Editorial board, Skeptic Magazine, a publication of The Skeptics Society
    The Skeptics Society

    The Skeptics Society is a nonprofit, member-supported organization devoted to promoting scientific skepticism and resisting the spread of pseudoscience, superstition, and irrationality beliefs....
  • Member, the American Philosophical Society
    American Philosophical Society

    The American Philosophical Society is a discussion group founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin as an offshoot of his earlier club, the Junto....
  • Member, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
    American Academy of Arts and Sciences

    The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an organization dedicated to scholarship and the advancement of learning. It serves as a nationwide honor society for the United States....
  • Member, the National Academy of Sciences
    United States National Academy of Sciences

    The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine."...
  • US regional director of the World Wide Fund for Nature
    World Wide Fund for Nature

    The World Wide Fund for Nature is an Internationalism non-governmental organization for the Conservation biology, Environmental science and Restoration ecology of the environment , formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its official name in the United States and Canada....
     (WWF/World Wildlife Fund)


Awards & Honors

  • 1961-1965 Prize Fellowship in Physiology, Trinity College, Cambridge
    Trinity College, Cambridge

    Trinity College is one of the 31 Colleges of the University of Cambridge of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or University of Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduate students, and over 160 Fellows; however, counting only the student body it has somewhat fewer than Homert...
    , England
  • 1968-1971 Lederle Medical Faculty Award
  • 1972 Distinguished Teaching Award, UCLA Medical Class
  • 1973 Distinguished Teaching Award, UCLA Medical Class
  • 1975 Distinguished Achievement Award, American Gastroenterological Association
    American Gastroenterological Association

    The American Gastroenterological Association is a medical association of gastroenterology. About 14,000 scientists and physicians are members of the organization, which was founded in 1897 and is the oldest medical association in the United States....
  • 1976 Kaiser Permanente
    Kaiser Permanente

    Kaiser Permanente is an integrated managed care organization, based in Oakland, California, founded in 1945 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and physician Sidney R....
    /Golden Apple Teaching Award
  • 1976 Nathaniel Bowditch Prize, American Physiological Society
    American Physiological Society

    The American Physiological Society APS was founded in 1887 and has 10.500 members most of which hold doctoral degrees in medicine, in physiology or in other health professions....
  • 1978 American Ornithologists Union, elected fellow
  • 1979 Franklin L. Burr Award, National Geographic Society
    National Geographic Society

    The National Geographic Society , headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world....
  • 1985 MacArthur Foundation
    MacArthur Foundation

    The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a major private grant -making private foundation based in Chicago that has awarded more than US$4 billion since its inception in 1978....
     “Genius” Grant
  • 1989 Archie Carr
    Archie Carr

    Archie Fairly Carr, Jr. was a Professor of Zoology at the University of Florida, a herpetologist, ecologist and a pioneering conservationist. In 1987 he was awarded the Eminent Ecologist Award by the Ecological Society of America....
     Medal
  • 1990 MacArthur Foundation Fellow
  • 1992 Tanner Lecturer, University of Utah
    University of Utah

    The University of Utah is a public university research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. One of ten institutions that make up the Utah System of Higher Education and Utah's premier research school currently enrolls 21,526 undergraduate and 6,684 graduate student students and has 1,419 regular Faculty members....
     and many other endowed lectureships
  • 1992 Royal Society Prizes for Science Books (Rhone-Poulenc Prize)
  • 1992 Los Angeles Times
    Los Angeles Times

    The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California and distributed throughout the Western United States. It is the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States and the fourth-most widely distributed newspaper in the United States....
     Science Book Prize
  • 1993 Zoological Society of San Diego
    Zoological Society of San Diego

    The Zoological Society of San Diego is a non-profit organization that operates the San Diego Zoo, the San Diego Zoo?s San Diego Wild Animal Park, and the department of Conservation and Research for Endangered Species ....
     Conservation Medal
  • 1994 Skeptics Society, Randi Award
  • 1995 Honorary doctor of literature, Sejong University, Korea
  • 1996 Faculty Research Lecturer, UCLA
  • 1997 Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Prize
    Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science

    The Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science is given annually by the Phi Beta Kappa Society to authors of significant books in the fields of science and mathematics....
  • 1998 Pulitzer Prize
    Pulitzer Prize

    The Pulitzer Prize is an United States award regarded as the highest national honor in newspaper journalism, literary achievements and musical composition....
  • 1998 Elliott Coues Award, American Ornithologists' Union
    American Ornithologists' Union

    The American Ornithologists' Union is an ornithology organization in the USA. Unlike the National Audubon Society, its members are primarily professional ornithologists rather than amateur birdwatching....
  • 1998 California Book Awards, Gold Medal in nonfiction
  • 1998 Royal Society Prizes for Science Books (Rhone-Poulenc Prize)
  • 1999 Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction
    Lannan Literary Awards

    The Lannan Literary Awards are a series of awards and literary fellowships given out in various fields by the . The foundation's awards are some of the most lucrative in the world....
  • 2001 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement
    Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement

    The Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement is an award for environmental science, energy, and medicine. Tyler Laureates receive a $200,000 annual prize and a gold medallion....
  • 2002 Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science
    Lewis Thomas Prize

    The Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science, named for its first recipient, Lewis Thomas, is an annual literary award awarded by Rockefeller University to scientists deemed to have accomplished a significant literary achievement: it "recognizes scientists as poets"....
  • 2006 Dickson Prize in Science
  • 2008 Ph.D. Honoris Causa at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
    Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

    The Katholieke Universiteit Leuven is the Flemish offshoot of the oldest university in the Low Countries which was originally founded in 1425 ....
    , Belgium


Family

  • Diamond's wife, Marie (nee Marie Nabel Cohen), is a granddaughter of Edward Werner
    Edward Werner

    Dr. Edward Henryk Werner was an economist, judge, industrialist, and politician. He was best known as Vice-Minister of Finance in Poland....
    , Polish vice-Finance Minister (pre-World War II
    World War II

    World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
    ). She is also a great-grandniece of Saint Raphael Kalinowski
    Raphael Kalinowski

    Raphael Kalinowski, Discalced Carmelites was a Poland Discalced Carmelite friar born as J?zef Kalinowski inside the Russian Empire Partitions of Poland, in the city of Vilnius ....
    .
  • Diamond has twin sons, Josh and Max Diamond, who attend Duke University
    Duke University

    Duke University is a private university research university located in Durham, North Carolina, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodism and Religious Society of Friends in the present-day town of Trinity, North Carolina in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892....
     and Northwestern University
    Northwestern University

    Northwestern University is a non-sectarian private university research university located in Evanston, Illinois and downtown Chicago, Illinois, United States....
     respectively. Both sons attended Los Angeles public schools.


See also

  • Assembly rules
    Assembly rules

    Community assembly rules are a set of controversial rules first proposed by Jared Diamond. The rules were developed after more than a decade of research into the avian assemblages on islands near New Guinea and assert that competition is responsible for determining the patterns of assemblage composition....

External links

  • - Video of a talk given at The Earth Institute
    The Earth Institute

    The Earth Institute was established at Columbia University in 1995. The research institute's stated mission is to address complex issues facing the planet and its inhabitants, with particular focus on sustainable development and the needs of the world's poor....
     at Columbia University
    Columbia University

    Columbia University in the City of New York , is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights, Manhattan neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City....
     in April 2007


Interviews

  • Charlie Rose
    Charlie Rose (talk show)

    Charlie Rose is an American television interview show, with Charlie Rose as executive producer, executive editor, and host. The show is syndicated on Public Broadcasting Service....
    , 24 Jan. 2005