Jared Diamond is a professor of physiology at the University of California in Los Angeles. He helped to establish modern Conservation Biology, and is an expert on the birds of New Guinea, having led over 18 expeditions there. He has won many awards for such varied subjects including linguistics, and most recently won a National Medal of Science for 1999, presented by Bill Clinton. He is the author of hundreds of scientific articles as well as the popular science books, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee’, and ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ which won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction.