युवाल नोआ हरारी Yuval Noah Harari

युवाल नोआ हरारी Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari was born in Israel in 1976 and took his doctorate at Oxford in 2002. He taught world history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Sapiens turned those lectures into a global bestseller. Homo Deus, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century and Nexus followed. His books have sold 55 million copies in 65 languages.

Curated by Nikhil Sharma: a medieval military historian whose world history lectures in Jerusalem became Sapiens. He has meditated every day since 2000 and spends weeks each year on silent retreat, usually in India. Now he warns that AI can create ideas of its own and might escape human control.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair, October 2024. Photograph: Martin Kraft, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
  • 55m Books sold: Across 65 languages by his own office’s count
  • 96 Weeks in the top three: Sapiens on the Sunday Times bestseller list without a break
  • 2000 Meditating since: Vipassana as taught by S. N. Goenka
  • 2019 Sapienship founded: Social impact company co-founded with his husband Itzik Yahav

The facts

Born
24 February 1976 in Kiryat Ata near Haifa, Israel (Wikipedia: Yuval Noah Harari)
Education
BA at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1993–1998). DPhil at Jesus College Oxford (2002) (Wikipedia: Yuval Noah Harari)
Now
Distinguished Research Fellow at Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. Has lectured in history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Yuval Noah Harari: About)
Company
Co-founder of Sapienship (2019). It works in research, education and storytelling (Yuval Noah Harari: About)
Boards
Director on the board of LawZero, the AI safety organisation founded by Yoshua Bengio, since January 2026 (LawZero: Seven global leaders join LawZero (15 January 2026))
Readership
55 million copies sold in 65 languages (Yuval Noah Harari: About)
Honours
Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality (2009 and 2012). Moncado Award of the Society for Military History (2011) (Wikipedia: Yuval Noah Harari)
Practice
Vipassana meditation since 2000. Two hours a day and a long silent retreat each year (Wikipedia: Yuval Noah Harari)
Family
Married to Itzik Yahav, who is also his manager. They met in 2002 and married in Toronto (Wikipedia: Yuval Noah Harari)

Overview · Life · Ideas · Books · Videos · Debates · People I learn from