Ackerman, Diane

1948 - Diane Ackerman was born in Waukegan, Illinois on October 7, 1948.

1978 - She received her B.A. from Penn State and an M.F.A. and PhD from Cornell University. Ackerman has received the Academy of American Poets' Lavan Award as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation.

1990 - Critics praised her book A Natural History of the Senses (1990) for being wide-ranging, informed, and charming.

2000 - Ackerman has received many prizes and awards, including a D. Litt. from Kenyon College, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the John Burroughs Nature Award, and the Lavan Poetry Prize, as well as being honored as a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library. She also has the rare distinction of having a molecule named after her --dianeackerone. She has taught at a variety of universities, including Columbia, the University of Richmond, and Cornell. Her essays about nature and human nature have appeared in The New York Times, Parade, The New Yorker, National Geographic, and many other journals, where they have been the subject of much praise. She hosted a five-hour PBS television series inspired by A Natural History of the Senses.

• "I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it.

  I want to have lived the width of it as well."

• "Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is."
• "There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools."
• "Success produces success, just as money produces money."