Pulitzer-Prize Winning Scientist Jared Diamond To Speak At Williams

12:00AM / Monday, January 08, 2007

Jared Diamond [Natural History Museum photo, www.nhm.org]

Williamstown - Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jared Diamond will discuss his new book, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed"(2005).

The lecture is scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 10 at 7 p.m. in Chapin Hall on the Williams campus. It is free and open to the public.

Diamond's talks are famous for their thoughtful combination of anthropology, biology, linguistics, genetics, and history.

He will explore the development of human civilization and the continued gulf between rich and poor in the global community. He will discuss globalization, colonization, and the reciprocal nature of global contact as the context of the discussion.

"Collapse" has already inspired an international museum exhibit that recently toured North America. In the book, Diamond examines what caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin and considers what contemporary society can learn from their fates.

Other of his acclaimed books include "The Third Chimpanzee" and "Why is Sex Fun?" both of which were international bestsellers.

Diamond has received numerous awards for his work including a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, The Conservation Medals of the Zoological Society of San Diego, The Carr Medal, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and Japan's International Cosmos Prize. In 2000 he was awarded USA's highest civilian scientific award, The National Medal of Science, for his landmark research and breakthrough discoveries in evolutionary biology.

His current research focuses on regulation of nutrient transport; integrative and evolutionary physiology..

He received his B.A. from Harvard College and his Ph.D in physiology and membrane biophysics from Cambridge University in 1961.

Diamond is professor of geography and physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The lecture is sponsored by the Lecture Committee and the Richmond Fund