Plenary Speaker

Jared Diamond

Known primarily for his research into the evolution of human societies from a biological and geographic point of view, Jared Mason Diamond was born on 10 September 1937 in Boston, Massachusetts. He earned an A.B. degree from Harvard University in 1958, and a Ph.D. in physiology from Cambridge University in 1961.

Diamond was a Junior Fellow at Harvard from 1962 to 1966, at which point he became a professor of physiology at the UCLA Medical School. He developed a level of expertise at that time in the ecology and evolution of birds in New Guinea, making many trips to that island and region. In fact, his early books dealt with the subjects of ornithology, New Guinea, ecology and evolution.

By 1997 he had transferred to the UCLA Department of Geography, where he has focused on biogeography and human society. In that same year his landmark work was published—Guns, Germs, and Steel—for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. This major book dealt with the rise and fall of societies and was followed in 2005 by Collapse, which looked in more detail at the fall of societies, paying particular attention to the environmental contribution to these denouements. His broad interests have led him to write articles on a number of subjects, including the QWERTY typewriter keyboard system and ethnic differences.

Diamond is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. He is U.S. regional director of the World Wildlife Fund, and serves on the editorial board of Skeptic Magazine.

Diamond has received many other professional awards in addition to the Pulitzer Prize, including a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 1985. He speaks twelve languages, including English, Latin, French, Greek, German, Spanish, Russian, Finnish, Fore (spoken in New Guinea), New Melanesian, Indonesian and Italian.

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