The son ofLouis K. Diamond. He is American geographer, historian, ornitho- logist, and author best known for his popular science books The Third Chimpanzee (1991); Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997, awarded a Pulitzer Prize); Collapse (2005), The World Until Yesterday (2012), and Upheaval (2019). Originally trained in biochemis- try and physiology, Diamond is known for drawing from a variety of fields, including anthropology, ecology, geography, and evolutionary biology. He is a professor of geo- graphy at UCLA. Diamond originally specialized in salt absorption in the gall bladder. He has also published scholarly works in the fields of ecology and ornithology, but is arguably 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 academic diversity, Diamond has been described as a polymath. Diamond is Member of the National Academy of Sciences. Awards: 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Guns, Germs and Steel; 1998 California Book Awards, Gold Medal in nonfiction for Guns, Germs and Steel; 1998 Aventis Prize for Science Books for Guns, Germs and Steel; 1998 International Cosmos Prize; 1999 Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction; 1999 National Medal of Science; 2004 A fo- reign holder of honorary title of Academician in Academy of Finland; 2006 Royal Society Prize for Science Books for Collapse and others.