Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari (Hebrew: יובל נח הררי [juˈval ˈnoaχ haˈʁaʁi]; born 1976) is an Israeli author, public intellectual,[1][2][3] historian and professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[4] He is the author of the popular science bestsellers Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2014), Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016), and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018). His writings examine free will, consciousness, intelligence, happiness, and suffering.

Yuval Noah Harari was born and raised in Kiryat Ata, Haifa District, Israel, as one of three children born to Shlomo and Pnina Harari. His family was a secular Jewish family. His father was a state-employed armaments engineer and his mother was an office administrator.[1][6][7] Harari taught himself to read at age three.[1] He studied in a class for intellectually gifted children at the Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa from the age of eight. He deferred mandatory military service in the Israel Defense Forces to pursue university studies as part of the Atuda program but was later exempted from completing his military service following his studies due to health issues.[1] He began studying history and international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at age 17.[8]

Harari studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1993 to 1998, where he received a B.A. degree and specialized in medieval history and military history. He completed his D.Phil. degree at Jesus College, Oxford, in 2002, under the supervision of Steven J. Gunn. From 2003 to 2005, he pursued postdoctoral studies in history as a Yad Hanadiv Fellow.[9] While at Oxford, Harari first encountered the writings of Jared Diamond, whom he has acknowledged as an influence on his own writing. At a Berggruen Institute salon, Harari said that Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel "was kind of an epiphany in my academic career. I realized that I could actually write such books."[1][10]

Harari writes about a "cognitive revolution" that supposedly occurred roughly 70,000 years ago when Homo sapiens supplanted the rival Neanderthals and other species of the genus Homo, developed language skills and structured societies, and ascended as apex predators, aided by the agricultural revolution and accelerated by the scientific revolution, which have allowed humans to approach near mastery over their environment. His books also examine the possible consequences of a futuristic biotechnological world in which intelligent biological organisms are surpassed by their own creations; he has said, "Homo sapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so".[5]

In Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Harari surveys human history from the evolutionary emergence of Homo sapiens to 21st-century political and technological revolutions. The book is based on his lectures to an undergraduate world history class.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuval_Noah_Harari