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Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond (Boston, 1937), an American biologist, physiologist and biogeographer, is well known for his many studies in the fields of anthropology, biology, ecology, linguistics, genetics and history. After studying at Roxbury Latin School, he obtained a PhD in Physiology from Harvard University, followed by a second PhD in Biophysics from Cambridge University. From 1962 to 1966 he worked at Harvard and, in 1966, he was appointed as a professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). At the age of thirty, he embarked on a second, concurrent career in the field of ecology in which he studied the evolution of birds in New Guinea, a project that entailed many subsequent expeditions to the zone. His third career began when he was fifty, this time studying the history of the environment, which led to his appointment as Professor of Geography and Environmental Health Sciences at UCLA, a position he still holds. His best-known book, winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize, is Guns, Germs and Steel and his most recent work, The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?,has just been published in Spanish (El mundo hasta ayer, ¿Qué podemos aprender de las sociedades tradicionales? Debate, 2013).

 

Update: 30 September 2013

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Centre Documentació i Debat

Albert Forns