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Jared Diamond

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Jared Diamond
Born
Jared Mason Diamond

(1937-09-10) September 10, 1937 (age 87)
Boston, Massachusetts
CitizenshipAmerican
Alma materHarvard College
University of Cambridge
AwardsPhi Beta Kappa Award in Science (1997)
Royal Society Prize for Science Books (1992, 1998 & 2006)
Pulitzer Prize (1998)
National Medal of Science (1999)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysiology
Biophysics
Ornithology
Environmentalism
History
Ecology
Geography
Evolutionary Biology
Anthropology
InstitutionsUniversity of California, Los Angeles
ThesisConcentrating activity of the gall-bladder (1961)

Jared Mason Diamond (born September 10, 1937) is an American scientist and author best known for his popular science books The Third Chimpanzee (1991), Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005). Originally trained in physiology, Diamond's work is known for drawing from a variety of fields, and he is currently Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles.[1][2]

Education

Diamond was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a Bessarabian Jewish family. His father Louis K. Diamond was a physician and his mother Flora Kaplan a teacher, musician, and linguist. He attended the Roxbury Latin School and earned a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College in 1958 and a PhD on the physiology and biophysics of membranes in the gall bladder from the University of Cambridge in 1961.[1][3]

Biography

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, career in ornithology and ecology, specialising in New Guinea and nearby islands. Then in his fifties, Diamond developed a third career in environmental history and became Professor of Geography at UCLA, his current position.[4] He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1999[5] and an honorary doctorate by Westfield State University in 2009.

Diamond is married to Marie Diamond (née Marie Nabel Cohen), granddaughter of Polish politician Edward Werner. They have twin sons, born in 1987.[6]

Diamond's original specialism was salt absorption in the gall bladder.[3][7] He has also published scholarly works in the fields of ecology and ornithology,[8] but is best known for authoring a number of popular science books combining topics from diverse fields other than those he has formally studied. Because of this diversity Diamond has been described as a polymath.[9][10]

Work

Diamond's first popular book, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (1991), examined human evolution and its relevance to the modern world, incorporating evidence from anthropology, evolutionary biology, genetics, ecology, and linguistics. It was well received by critics and won the 1992 Rhône-Poulenc Prize for Science Books[11] and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.[12] In 1997, he followed this up with Why is Sex Fun?, which focused in on the evolution of human sexuality, again drawing from anthropology, ecology, and evolutionary biology.

His third and best known popular science book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, was published in 1997. In it, Diamond sought to explain the political and economic dominance of Eurasian societies over those from other parts of the world throughout history. Using evidence archaeological and historical case studies and evidence from genetics and linguistics, he argued that gaps in power and technology between human societies are not primarily caused by cultural or racial differences, but originated in environmental differences amplified by various positive feedback loops. According to Diamond the geography and ecology of the Eurasian landmass gave societies there an advantage over those on other continents, which they were subsequently able to dominate or conquer. Guns, Germs, and Steel was a best-seller and received several awards, including a Pulitzer Prize, an Aventis Prize for Science Books[11] and the 1997 Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science. However the work was criticised for factual inaccuracies in some of Diamond's case studies,[13][14][15] and more generally as an argument for environmental determinism.[16][17] A television documentary series based on the book was produced by the National Geographic Society in 2005.[18][19]

Diamond's next book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), examined a range of past civilizations in an attempt to identify why they either collapsed or succeeded, and considers what contemporary societies can learn from these historical examples. As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, he argued against explanations for the failure of past societies based primarily on cultural factors, instead focusing on ecology. Among the societies mentioned in the book are the Norse and Inuit of Greenland, the Maya, the Anasazi, the indigenous people of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Japan, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and modern Montana. Similarly Collapse was again both critically acclaimed and criticised for environmental determinism and specific factual inaccuracies.[20] It was nominated for Royal Society Prize for Science Books.[11] In 2012, Carl Lipo and Terry Hunt proposed an alternative theory to a central thesis of "Collapse" by demonstrating – both through research and full-scale recreation for National Geographic television – that the statues on Rapa Nui could have "walked" and that the people of the island may not have cut trees to transport their statues.[21]

Diamond's most recent book Natural Experiments of History, co-edited with James Robinson, is a collection of essays illustrating the multidisciplinary and comparative approach to the study of history that he advocates.[22]

Vengeance Is Ours (2008)

On April 21, 2009, Henep Isum Mandingo and Hup Daniel Wemp of Papua New Guinea filed a $10 million USD defamation lawsuit against Diamond over a 2008 New Yorker magazine article entitled "Vengeance Is Ours: What Can Tribal Societies Tell Us About Our Need to Get Even?"[23] Mandingo and Wemp claimed the article, an account of feuds and vengeance killings in the New Guinea highlands, misrepresented and embellished their involvement in inter-tribal violence.[24] The lawsuit came after Rhonda Roland Shearer alleged that the New Yorker article contained factual inaccuracies – most notably that Mandingo was fit and healthy, not, as claimed by Diamond, wheelchair-bound after being injured in fighting.[25][26]

Diamond and the New Yorker both stood by the article, maintaining that it was a faithful account of the story related to Diamond by Wemp while they worked together in 2001 and again in a formal interview in 2006. They said that the article was based on "detailed notes", that both Diamond and the magazine did all they reasonably could to verify the story, and that in a recorded phone interview conducted in August 2008 by Chris Jennings, a fact checker for the New Yorker, Wemp did not raise any significant objections.[25] Wemp contends he told Jennings the story was "inaccurate, inaccurate".[26] According to anthropologist Pauline Wiessner, an expert on tribal warfare in Papua New Guinea, young men often exaggerate or make up entirely their exploits in tribal warfare; she stated that Diamond would have been naïve to accept Wemp's stories at face value.[25]

Selected publications

Main article: Jared Diamond bibliography

Books

Articles and book chapters

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  • The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race (May 1987) Discover pp. 64–66
  • Curse and Blessing of the Ghetto (March 1991) Discover, pp. 60–66
  • Race Without Color (November 1994) Discover
  • The Curse of QWERTY (April 1997) Discover
  • Kinship With The Stars (May 1997) Discover
  • Japanese Roots (June 1998) Discover
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  • What’s Your Consumption Factor? (January 2, 2008) The New York Times
  • Vengeance is Ours (April 2008) The New Yorker
  • Diamond, Jared (2011). "Why do some societies make disastrous decisions?". In John Brockman (ed.). Culture: leading scientists explore civilizations, art, networks, reputation, and the on-line revolution. New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-0-06-202313-1.

Boards

Awards and honors

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Jim Al-Khalili talks to Jared Diamond about his journey from the gall bladder to global history via a passion for the birds of Papua New Guinea". Retrieved December 19, 2012.
  2. ^ Jared Diamond publications indexed by Microsoft Academic
  3. ^ a b Diamond, Jared (1961). Concentrating activity of the gall-bladder (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge.
  4. ^ a b "The Prize Winner, 1998". Expo-Cosmos. Retrieved May 18, 2009.
  5. ^ National Science Foundation – The President's National Medal of Science
  6. ^ Radio interview with Jim Al-Khalili, BBC Radio 4, series The Life Scientific, broadcast 4/12/2012
  7. ^ Radio interview by NPR
  8. ^ Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.1111/j.1474-919X.1999.tb07540.x, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi=10.1111/j.1474-919X.1999.tb07540.x instead.
  9. ^ http://www.abc.net.au/animals/human_stars.htm
  10. ^ "Rapa Nui déjà vu". The Economist. October 8, 2009.
  11. ^ a b c d e f "Prize for Science Books previous winners and shortlists". Royal Society. Retrieved May 18, 2009.
  12. ^ a b http://www.latimes.com/extras/bookprizes/winners_byaward.html#science "Los Angeles Times Festival of Books – Book Prizes – Winners by Award (science)". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved May 18, 2009. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  13. ^ Tom Tomlinson (May 1998). "Review:Guns, Germs and Steer: The Fates of Human Societies". Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved March 14, 2008.
  14. ^ McNeill, J.R. (February 2001). "The World According to Jared Diamond". The History Teacher. 34 (2).
  15. ^ Jared Diamond; Reply by William H. McNeill (June 26, 1997). "Guns, Germs, and Steel". The New York Review of Books. 44 (11).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  16. ^ James M. Blaut (2000). Eight Eurocentric Historians (August 10, 2000 ed.). The Guilford Press. p. 228. ISBN 1-57230-591-6. Retrieved August 5, 2008.
  17. ^ Blaut, J.M. (1999). "Environmentalism and Eurocentrism". The Geographical Review. 89 (3). American Geographical Society: 391. doi:10.2307/216157. JSTOR 216157. Retrieved July 9, 2008. full text
  18. ^ Lovgren, Stefan (July 6, 2005). "'Guns, Germs and Steel': Jared Diamond on Geography as Power". National Geographic News. Retrieved December 6, 2012.
  19. ^ "Guns, Germs & Steel: The Show". PBS. Retrieved December 6, 2012.
  20. ^ McAnany, P.A. & Yoffee, N. (Eds) (2010). Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire. Cambridge University Press.
  21. ^ "How Easter Island's Statues Walked – Alan Boyle". MSNBC for National Geographic. Retrieved June 19, 2012.
  22. ^ "Natural Experiments of History – Jared Diamond, James A. Robinson". Harvard University Press. Retrieved September 18, 2010.
  23. ^ Diamond, Jared (April 21, 2008). "Vengeance Is Ours". Annals of Anthropology. p. 74.(subscription required)
  24. ^ Maull, Samuel (April 22, 2009). "Author Jared Diamond sued for libel" (PDF). AP News. Retrieved December 6, 2012.
  25. ^ a b c Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.1126/science.324_872, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi=10.1126/science.324_872 instead.
  26. ^ a b Shearer, Rhonda Roland (April 21, 2009). "JARED DIAMOND'S FACTUAL COLLAPSE: New Yorker Mag's Papua New Guinea Revenge Tale Untrue...Tribal Members Angry, Want Justice". Stinky Journalism.org. Retrieved May 18, 2009.
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Lectures and talks

Interviews

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