Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari was born in Israel in 1976 and originally specialised in world history, medieval history and military history.⁠[1]

He studied for his BA in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1993 to 1996 and for his MA there from 1996 to 1998.⁠[2]

From 1998 to 2002 he studied for a D.Phil. in modern history at Jesus College, Oxford, under Steven J. Gunn; from 2003 to 2005 he did postdoctoral research.⁠[2]

In 2001 he met his future husband, Itzik Yahav, on Check Me Out, Israel’s first dating app for gay people.⁠[3]

In 2004 Boydell Press published Renaissance Military Memoirs: War, History, and Identity, 1450–1600, adapted from his doctoral thesis, a systematic study of the authors of Renaissance military memoirs, their strategies of legitimisation and their conceptions of war and life.⁠[4]

In 2005 he was appointed lecturer in the Hebrew University’s Department of History.⁠[2]

In 2008 Palgrave published his The Ultimate Experience: Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture, 1450–2000, which traces how combat in European military memoirs shifted from a means to an end or an honourable way of life to a revelatory experience granting veterans privileged knowledge from the 18th century onward.⁠[5]

He received the Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality in 2009 and 2012, and in 2011 the Society for Military History’s Moncado Award for outstanding articles on military history.⁠[6]

He based Sapiens on his notes for 20 undergraduate world-history lectures; after its publication in 2014 it was translated into 65 languages and spent 96 consecutive weeks on The New York Times bestseller list.⁠[3]

Sapiens tells the history of Homo sapiens from its evolutionary roots to the age of capitalism and genetic engineering, focusing on processes such as the advent of agriculture, the creation of money, the spread of religion and the rise of the nation state, and combining history, biology, philosophy and economics.⁠[7]

In 2016 he published Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, examining the future projects facing humanity in the 21st century.⁠[1]

The book asks how global power might shift as natural selection is replaced by intelligent design, raising questions such as what happens when algorithms know us better than we know ourselves and computers push humans out of the job market to create a “useless class.”⁠[8]

In 2018 he gave a TED talk appearing as a hologram live from Tel Aviv, explaining the difference between fascism and nationalism and warning that the information-technology revolution could make dictatorships more efficient and capable of control, followed by a brief conversation with TED curator Chris Anderson.⁠[9]

In September 2018, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century was published in the United States, turning to the present and to issues from Trump and terrorism to Brexit and big data; it argues that humans think in stories rather than in facts.⁠[10]

In 2019 he and his husband, Itzik Yahav, co-founded the company Sapienship to develop entertainment and educational products.⁠[3]

Sapienship’s main goal is to focus public conversation on the most important challenges facing the world through global projects in education, storytelling, research and investment.⁠[11]

In April 2019 Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a conversation with him in which they discussed whether the internet is connecting or fragmenting society, the different ways artificial intelligence could be developed, and how algorithms affect people’s lives.⁠[12]

In July 2019 changes in the Russian translation of 21 Lessons for the 21st Century drew criticism: references to Russian disinformation during the occupation of Crimea were replaced with examples involving Donald Trump, and the dedication to his partner was altered.⁠[13]

Harari explained that he agreed to some changes to avoid censorship by the Russian government so that the book’s ideas could reach Russian readers, said the book still contains much criticism of the Putin regime, and said some changes were made without his knowledge.⁠[13]

In 2020, as creator and co-writer, he teamed up with the comics artists David Vandermeulen and Daniel Casanave to launch Sapiens: A Graphic History, a four-volume graphic-novel adaptation of Sapiens.⁠[1]

The series casts a fictional Yuval as a guide through the history of the human species, and was facilitated by Sapienship and the French publisher Albin Michel.⁠[14]

On January 27, 2020, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) awarded him an honorary doctorate for his years of work on the history and future of humankind and his critical thinking on technological change; Rector Caroline Pauwels presented it together with 21 students and dedicated the title to everyone who is 21 in the 21st century.⁠[15]

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, he argued in The Guardian that Putin had already lost the war, because it is much easier to conquer a country than to hold it and Ukrainians were resisting with all their heart.⁠[16]

In July 2022 the neuroscientist Darshana Narayanan wrote in Current Affairs that he sacrifices science for sensationalism, saying her fact-check of Sapiens found numerous substantial errors.⁠[17]

On October 18, 2022, his first children’s book, Unstoppable Us, Volume 1: How Humans Took Over the World, illustrated by Ricard Zaplana Ruiz, was published in the United States, explaining how physically weak humans came to dominate other animals.⁠[18]

The series is planned in four volumes, has been translated into 34 languages and is produced by Sapienship with the editorial teams of the German publishers C.H. Beck and dtv.⁠[19]

On March 4, 2023, he addressed a Tel Aviv rally against the government’s judicial overhaul, calling the struggle a historic test for Israelis, urging educational institutions to pause regular work to focus on democracy and human rights, and describing democracy as a deal between citizens and government.⁠[20]

He appeared on episode 390 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, whose description calls him a historian and philosopher; topics included intelligence, the origin of humans, suffering, Hitler, Benjamin Netanyahu, peace in Ukraine, conspiracy theories, AI safety, how to think, advice for young people, love, mortality and the meaning of life.⁠[21]

In September 2024 he published Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI; he said his main aim was to alert readers to the exponential and unforeseen power of AI, which he describes as not a tool but an agent able to make decisions by itself.⁠[22]

The book argues that humanity gains power by building large networks of cooperation, most easily maintained by spreading fictions and mass delusions, and that in the 21st century AI may form the nexus for a new network of delusions.⁠[23]

On January 15, 2026, LawZero, the AI-safety nonprofit co-led by Yoshua BengioYoshua BengioYoshua Bengio is a professor of computer science at Université de Montréal, founder of Mila and a deep learning pioneer who shared the 2018 Turing Award with Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun; since 2023 he has turned to AI safety research, chairing the International AI Safety Report and founding the non-profit LawZero in 2025. He appeared on the Lex Fridman Podcast in 2018.Open the full entry, announced his appointment to its Board of Directors.⁠[24]

As of October 2026 his official website announces that his new book, The Laws of History, will be published on September 21, 2027; it identifies six laws that all historical processes obey and argues that history is an open-ended process that cannot be predicted.⁠[25]

Personal website: Public link: https://www.ynharari.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[26]

X: Public account: https://x.com/harari_yuval (opens in a new window)⁠[21]

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem: Official website: https://en.huji.ac.il/ (opens in a new window)⁠[10]

Sapienship: Official website: https://www.sapienship.co/ (opens in a new window)⁠[11]