Daniel Kahneman
Daniel Kahneman (1934–2024) was an Israeli-American psychologist whose research fundamentally influenced the study of human judgment, decision-making, and behavioral economics. Born in Tel Aviv in 1934 while his family was based in Paris, he spent part of his childhood in France before returning to Palestine during the Second World War. He studied psychology and mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and later earned a PhD in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1961. Kahneman’s most influential research, much of it conducted collaboratively with Amos Tversky, demonstrated systematic ways in which human judgment departs from the assumptions of perfectly rational decision-making, particularly through the use of heuristics and susceptibility to cognitive biases. Their work on judgment under uncertainty led to prospect theory, which explains how people evaluate gains and losses differently and provided a major foundation for behavioral economics. Kahneman held academic positions at the Hebrew University, the University of British Columbia, the University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University. In 2002, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for integrating psychological insights into economic science, particularly concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty, and his later book Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) brought many of his ideas to a broad international readership.