Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari was born in Israel in 1976 and showed early intellectual promise, teaching himself to read at age three and studying in a gifted program at the Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa from age eight. He began studying history and international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at age 17, deferring Israeli military service via the Atuda program but later being exempted due to health issues. Harari earned his PhD from the University of Oxford in 2002, specializing in medieval history, military history, and macro-historical questions like the interplay of history and biology, justice in history, and ethical issues from science and technology. As a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and former Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Harari initially published academic works such as Special Operations in the Age of Chivalry, 1100–1550 and The Ultimate Experience: Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture, 1450–2000. His pivot to popular writing came with Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, which exploded in popularity after its 2014 English release, becoming a New York Times bestseller and holding top UK spots for 96 weeks. This success led to further books like Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, the Sapiens: A Graphic History series, Unstoppable Us, and Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI.