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Diane Ackerman, Ph.D.

Diane Ackerman, Ph.D., is the author of twenty-five works of poetry and nonfiction about nature and human nature, including several New York Times bestsellers: The Human Age, which received the PEN Henry David Thoreau Award; A Natural History of the Senses, which inspired a PBS NOVA series that she hosted; and The Zookeeper’s Wife, which received the Orion Book Award and Jan Karski Humanitarian Award. A movie version of The Zookeeper’s Wife appeared in 2017. One Hundred Names for Love, a memoir, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. In her other nonfiction books, she considers the alchemy of the brain, natural history of love, plight and fascination of endangered animals, deep play, crisis-line counseling, becoming a pilot, and other subjects. She was a finalist in the Journalist in Space Project (cancelled after Challenger), and she has the somewhat unusual distinction of having a molecule named after her—dianeackerone—a sex pheromone in crocodilians.