Jared Mason Diamond (born September 10, 1937) is an American ecologist, geographer, biologist, anthropologist and writer famous for his popular science books The Third Chimpanzees (1991 ); Weapons, Germs and Steel (1997, awarded with Pulitzer Prize); Close (2005); and The World Until Yesterday (2012). Initially trained in physiology, Diamond is known for drawing from various fields, including anthropology, ecology, geography and evolutionary biology. He is a professor of geography at UCLA.
In 2005, Diamond was ranked ninth in a poll by Prospect and Foreign Policy of the world's top 100 public intellectuals.
Video Jared Diamond
Early life and education
Diamond was born in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Both his parents came from an East European Jewish family who emigrated to the United States. His father, Louis Diamond, was a doctor, and his mother, Flora Kaplan, a teacher, linguist, and concert pianist. Diamond himself began studying piano at the age of six; many years later he would propose to his wife after playing Brahms Intermezzo in A minor for her. He studied at the Roxbury School of Latin and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology and history from Harvard College in 1958 and a PhD in bilge membrane physiology and biophysics from Trinity College, University of Cambridge in 1961.
Maps Jared Diamond
Careers
After graduating from Cambridge, Diamond returned to Harvard as a Junior Fellow until 1965, and, in 1968, became professor of physiology at UCLA Medical School. While in his twenties, he developed a second parallel, ecological, and ecological career, specializing 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 taught at LUISS Guido Carli in Rome. He won the National Medal of Science in 1999 and Westfield State University gave him honorary doctorates in 2009.
The diamond was originally specialized in the absorption of salt in the gallbladder. He has also published scientific works in the field of ecology and ornithology, but it is arguably best known for writing a number of popular science books that combine topics from fields other than those he has formally studied. Due to this academic diversity, Diamond is described as a polymath.
Popular science works with
The Third Chimpanzee <1991>The first popular book of Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of Human Animals (1991), examines human evolution and its relevance to the modern world, combining evidence from anthropology, evolutionary biology, genetics, ecology, and linguistics. This book explores how humans evolved to be very different from other animals, although it shares more than 98% of our DNA with our closest animal relatives, chimps. The book also examines the origins of animal language, art, agriculture, smoking and drug use, and other seemingly unique human attributes. It was well received by the critics and won the 1992 RhÃÆ'Â'ne-Poulenc Prize for Science Books and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Weapons, Germs and Steel ( 1997)
His second and most famous popular scientific book, The Weapons, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, was published in 1997. This book asks why the Eurasians conquered or abandoned Native Americans, Australians, and Africa, not the other way around. It argues that this result is not due to the biological advantages of the Eurasian society itself but rather to the features of the Eurasian continent, in particular, the high diversity of plant and animal species suitable for domestication and the eastern/western axis particularly preferred by the spread of domestic, technology for long distance with little change in latitude. The first part of this book focuses on the reasons why only a few species of wild plants and animals are found to be suitable for domestication. The second section discusses how local domestication-based food production leads to the development of a dense and high-rise human population, writing, centralized political organization, and epidemic infectious diseases. The third section compares the development of food production and human society among the various continents and regions of the world. Weapons, Germs and Steel became an international best-seller, translated into 33 languages, and received several awards, including Pulitzer Prize, Aventis Prize for Science Book and 1997 Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science. The television documentary series based on this book was produced by the National Geographic Society in 2005.
Why Sex Fun? (1997)
In his third book, Why Sex Fun? , also published in 1997, Diamond discusses the evolutionary factors that underlie the traits of human sexuality that are generally taken for granted but that is very unusual among our animal families. Such features include long-term partner relationships (marriages), coexistence of couples who cooperate economically in shared communal areas, providing parent care by fathers as well as by mothers, having sex in private rather than in public, concealed ovulation, receptive sexual women covering most of the menstrual cycle (including infertility days), female but not male menopause, and typical secondary sexual characteristics.
Close (2005)
The next Diamond Book, Closed: How People Choose Failed or Successfully , published in 2005, examines past societies in an attempt to identify why they are collapsing or growing and considering what contemporary society can learn from the example -his historical example. As in Arms, Germs and Steel, he opposes explanations for past societal failures primarily based on cultural factors, rather than focusing on ecology. Among the people mentioned in this book are Norse and Inuit of Greenland, Maya, Anasazi, indigenous peoples Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Japan, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and modern Montana. The book concludes by asking why some societies make hazardous decisions, how big the business affects the environment, what our major environmental problems are today, and what the individual can do about the problem. Like Weapons, Germs and Steel , Collapse is translated into dozens of languages, becoming an international best-seller, and is 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 and Natural Experiments in History (2010)
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 the two natives mentioned in the article filed suit against Diamond and The New Yorker claiming the article was slandering them. In 2013, The Observer reported that the lawsuit "was withdrawn by mutual consent after the death of their lawyer suddenly."
In 2010, Diamond co-edited (with James Robinson) Natural Experiments of History, a collection of seven case studies illustrating a multidisciplinary and comparative approach to the history studies he supports. The title of the book comes from the fact that it is impossible to study history with the preferred method of laboratory science, that is, by controlled experiments that compare human societies replicated as if they were tubes of bacterial reaction. Instead, we must look at a natural experiment in which human societies are similar in many ways historically disrupted, either by different initial conditions or by different effects. The closing of this book classifies natural experiments, discusses practical difficulties to learn it, and offers advice on how to overcome such difficulties.
World Until Yesterday (2012)
The latest Diamond book, The World Until Yesterday , published in 2012, asks what the western world can learn from traditional societies. It surveys 39 traditional small-scale peasant communities and hunter-gatherers in terms of how they deal with universal human problems. The issues covered include splitting up, settling disputes, raising children, treating older people, facing dangers, formulating religions, learning languages, and staying healthy. This book shows that some traditional societal practices can be adopted useful in today's modern industrial world, whether by individuals or by society as a whole.
Personal life
Diamond is married to Marie Cohen, the grandson of Polish politician Edward Werner. They have twin sons, born in 1987.
Boards
- Skeptic Magazine's editorial board , The Skeptics Society publication.
- Member of the American Philosophical Society.
- Member of the American Academy of Art and Science.
- Member of the National Academy of Sciences.
- US regional director of the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Awards and honor
Selected bibliography
- 1992: Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of Human Animals (ISBN: 0-06-098403-1 -).
- 1997: Why Sex Fun? (ISBNÃ, 0-465-03127-7 -).
- 1997: Weapons, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies (ISBN 978-0-099-30278-0). Also published under the title Weapons, Germs and Steel: A brief history of all people during the last 13,000 years (ISBN 978-0099302780).
- 2005: Collapse: How People Choose Failed or Successfully (ISBN: 978-0241958681).
- 2010: Natural History Experiment , with James A. Robinson (ISBN 0-674-03557-7).
- 2012: World to Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Communities? (ISBN 978-0141024486).
- 2015: Third Chimpanzee for Youth: The Evolution and Future of Human Animals (ISBN: 9781609806118).
See also
- The assembly rule
- Comparative history
- Environmental determinism
- List of important publications in anthropology
- Arnold J. Toynbee
References
External links
- Private website
- Diamond page at UCLA Department of Geography
- UCLA Highlights - Jared Diamonds
- Jared Diamond with bio, conversations, podcasts on The Third Culture , (Edge Foundation)
- Jared Diamond at TED
- Jared Diamond: Why does society collapse? (TED2003)
- Jared Diamond: How people can grow old better (TED2013)
- Freak: How People Choose Fail or Success at The Earth Institute at Columbia University, April 2007
- The Evolution of Religion on YouTube at the Center for Religion and Civil Culture, University of Southern California
- PBS - Weapons, Germs and Steel on PBS (with full transcript)
- 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
- An interview with Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson on Natural History Experiments in New Books in History
- Jared Diamond in IMDb
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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