Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari was born in 1976 and became a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, teaching undergraduates world history. He converted those lectures into Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), which argues that a cognitive revolution 70,000 years ago let Homo sapiens develop language, structure societies, and dominate rival species like Neanderthals on the way to near mastery over the environment. The book became a global bestseller, followed by Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016), 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018), and Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI (2024). His work explores free will, consciousness, intelligence, and the role of storytelling in evolution, warning that biotechnology may let humanity's creations surpass biological organisms - "Homo sapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so." Academic historians have been far less enthusiastic than his millions of readers.