ExplorersBio

Jared Diamond

Geographer

Explorer-in-Residence

Photograph by Tim Laman

Photograph by Becky Hale

Jared Diamond is professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and the widely acclaimed Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, which won him a Pulitzer Prize as well as Britain's 1998 Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize.

Diamond is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (Genius Award); research prizes and grants from the American Physiological Society, National Geographic Society, and Zoological Society of San Diego; and many teaching awards and endowed public lectureships. In addition, he has been elected a member of all three of the leading national scientific/academic honorary societies—National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and American Philosophical Society.

Diamond's field experience includes 22 expeditions to New Guinea and neighboring islands to study ecology and evolution of birds; the rediscovery of New Guinea's long-lost golden fronted bowerbird; and other field projects in North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. As a conservationist, he devised a comprehensive plan, almost all of which was implemented, for Indonesian New Guinea's national park system. He has also taken part in numerous field projects for the Indonesian government and World Wildlife Fund. He is a founding member of the board of the Society of Conservation Biology and a member of the board of directors of World Wildlife Fund/USA and Conservation International.

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Kids

Nat Geo E-Team

What are Jared Diamond and the rest of the National Geographic Explorers up to? Meet the E-Team and learn about their projects in this interactive mural.

In Their Words

History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves.

-Jared Diamond

Videos

Conservation in the 21st Century

Greg Anderson, David Harris, Enric Sala, Mike Fay, and Jared Diamond discuss the climate that today's explorers operate in.