Jared M. Diamond is a professor of physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine, an evolutionary biologist, physiologist, and bio-geographer. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for his book Guns, Germs and Steel, which set out to explain in a simple and complete way the course of human beings for the last ten-thousand years. The book sets out to answer the question why did European civilization win out over other competing civilizations.

He also wrote the book The Third Chimpanzee.

Diamond is also a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences.