<b>Jared Mason Diamond</b> (b. 10 September 1937) is an American evolutionary biologist, physiologist, biogeographer, lecturer, and nonfiction author.<!--break--> Diamond works as a professor of geography and physiology at UCLA. He is best known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" (1998), which also won the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science. He received the National Medal of Science in 1999.<br/>Diamond was born in Boston of Polish-Jewish heritage, to a physician father and a teacher/musician/linguist mother. After attending the Roxbury Latin School, he earned an AB degree from Harvard in 1958 and his Ph.D. in physiology and membrane biophysics from Cambridge University in 1961. During 1962-1966, he returned to Harvard as a Junior Fellow. He became a professor of physiology at UCLA Medical School in 1966. While in his twenties, he also developed a second, parallel, career in the ecology and evolution of New Guinea birds, and has since led numerous trips to explore New Guinea and nearby islands. In his fifties, Diamond gradually developed a third career in environmental history, becoming a professor of geography and of environmental health sciences at UCLA, his current position.<br/>Diamond is the author of a number of popular science works that combine anthropology, biology, ecology, linguistics, genetics, and history.<br/>Wiki:<br/><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond</a></a>