Diamond, Jared

American Physiologist and Biologist 1937-

In 1997, Jared Diamond won the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction with his book Guns, Germs and Steel, an analysis of the geographical and environmental origins of the long-term distribution of wealth and power in different regions of the world. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, on September 7, 1937,Diamond was raised in an intellectually stimulating household by a physician father, interested in the genetics of childhood diseases, and a mother who was a linguist and teacher. Diamond became an avid bird watcher at the age of seven. All these influences led in 1958 to a biology degree from Harvard, where he studied biological research, language, history and writing. Diamond earned a Ph.D. in physiology from Cambridge, and then a professorship at UCLA in 1968 where he taught molecular physiology, evolutionary biology, and evolutionary biogeography.

Jared Diamond won a Pulitzer Prize for his analysis of the geographical and environmental origins of the long-term distribution of wealth and power.

Through years of fieldwork in South America, southern Africa, Indonesia, Australia, and New Guinea, he wrote more than 200 papers on physiology, ecology, and ornithology. Diamond also began writing science books for popular audiences. The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal, 1992, discusses possible theories for the divergence between humans and chimps, who share 98.4 percent of the same genetic material. Why Is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality, 1997, examines aspects of human sexuality such as why only humans and pilot whales undergo menopause and why humans, dolphins, and chimpanzees are the only species to have sex for pleasure—that is, when the female is not fertile and there is no possibility of reproduction.

It was in the 1970s, while studying the ecological diversity of bird fauna in New Guinea, that Diamond was asked by his local guide why the white men had all the cargo, or technological goods. Thinking about it, Diamond couldn't come up with an answer. When he pursued the answer back in the United States with other scientists, the answers he received seemed to always come down to: We (being western Europe and the United States) are smarter than they are. Reflecting on his experiences in the jungle, Diamond knew that was untrue. The tribesmen were not only intelligent, but also far more observant and competent in their environment than Diamond thought he would ever be. Guns, Germs and Steel, he later said, was written to demolish the intellectual basis for racism. The book proposes that certain geographical regions of the globe lent themselves to the development of agriculture, which in turn encouraged technological growth. Diamond hoped that his work would show that historical studies of human beings can be pursued as scientifically as studies of dinosaurs—and can teach us what shaped the modern world, and what might shape our future.