Department of Economics
February 22, 2016

Economics Department Hosts Biologist-Historian Jared Diamond

Announcements

The noted biologist, geographer and historian Jared Diamond will be the guest of Brown’s Economics Department on March 23 and 24, 2016. He’ll deliver a public lecture to the university at 4:00 p.m. on Wed. March 23, titled “Why did history unfold in different ways on different continents for the last 13,000 years?” and will engage in an informal colloquium with members of the Economics Department on the role of adoptions of agriculture in influencing differential patterns of global economic development, at 4:00 p.m. March 24.

Jared DiamondDiamond’s public lecture on March 23 will take place at Salomon Center Room 101. It will expand on the themes of his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Guns, Germs and Steel, 1997. Diamond has published other influential books including Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, in 2005, and The World until Yesterday: What Can we Learn from Traditional Societies? in 2013, and he is presently at work on a new book discussing the ways different societies have dealt with crises in modern history. His scientific work began in the field of physiology, and he has published hundreds of papers in journals including Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a winner of numerous awards and fellowships, including a National Medal of Science and a MacArthur Fellowship. 

The colloquium with faculty and graduate students in the Economics Department on March 24th will give Prof. Diamond and members of the department an opportunity to discuss the issue of his public lecture in a more scholarly way and in a more intimate setting. It will include a short presentation by Diamond on some specific issues of the literature on agriculture and comparative economic growth, a related presentation by Brown Professor Oded Galor, and discussion with those attending. Economics faculty, visitors, and graduate students interested in the issues are encouraged to attend.  The session will be held in 301 Robinson Hall.