Daniel Kahneman

Kahneman was born on March 5, 1934, in Tel Aviv.⁠[1]

His parents were living in France at the time; his mother was visiting relatives in Tel Aviv when he was born.⁠[2]

Born to a Jewish family, he was raised in Paris during the Nazi occupation; his father was detained by the Nazis for six weeks and then released, the family evaded the Nazis for the rest of the war, and in 1948 they moved to British-controlled Palestine.⁠[3]

In 1954 he received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and psychology from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and then served in the psychology department of the Israel Defense Forces.⁠[4]

In 1958 he won a scholarship to the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry, where he received his PhD in 1961; he then taught psychology at the Hebrew University, becoming a professor in 1970.⁠[4]

In 1973 Kahneman published his first book, Attention and Effort; over his career he taught psychology at the Hebrew University, the University of British Columbia, UC Berkeley and Princeton UniversityPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry.⁠[3]

Kahneman and Amos Tversky collaborated for decades on cognitive biases; Michael Lewis’s The Undoing Project, published by Norton in 2017, tells the story of their friendship and collaboration. Tversky died in 1996.⁠[5]

On September 27, 1974, the two published “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” in Science, describing three heuristics people use when judging under uncertainty—representativeness, availability, and adjustment from an anchor—and noting that they are usually economical and effective but lead to systematic and predictable errors.⁠[6]

In 1978 Kahneman and his wife, the psychologist Anne Treisman, joined the University of British Columbia’s Department of Psychology together; the department says his collaboration with Tversky during his UBC years led to the development of prospect theory.⁠[7]

In March 1979 Tversky and Kahneman published “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk” in Econometrica, volume 47, issue 2, criticizing expected utility theory as a description of choice under risk and proposing that options are evaluated as gains and losses rather than final wealth, with a value function steeper for losses than for gains.⁠[8]

In 1982 he received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, and in 1995 the Hilgard Award for Contributions to General Psychology.⁠[1]

The economist Richard Thaler recalled that he and Kahneman worked together in Vancouver in 1984–85, one of the most productive years for each of them; Kahneman later became a member of the Russell Sage Foundation’s Behavioral Economics Roundtable and co-edited the foundation’s book Well-Being with Ed Diener and Norbert Schwarz.⁠[9]

In 1993, after appointments at the Hebrew University, the University of British Columbia and UC Berkeley, Kahneman joined Princeton University; he took emeritus status in 2007 as Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology, Emeritus.⁠[2]

At Princeton he held a joint appointment in the Department of Psychology and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and with Eldar Shafir developed the school’s first psychology-for-policy course.⁠[10]

In 2002 Kahneman shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Vernon Smith.⁠[7]

In September 2010 Kahneman and the Princeton economist Angus Deaton published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences analyzing more than 450,000 responses to a daily U.S. survey; life ratings rose steadily with income, while emotional well-being stopped improving beyond about $75,000 a year.⁠[11]

In 2011 Farrar, Straus and Giroux published his Thinking, Fast and Slow, which distinguishes a fast, intuitive and emotional “System 1” from a slower, more deliberative and more logical “System 2”; The New York Times Book Review selected it as one of the ten best books of 2011.⁠[12]

In 2012 Kahneman wrote to researchers working on social priming, warning of a “train wreck looming” and proposing a “daisy chain” in which labs would replicate one another’s priming effects; researchers including Brian Nosek and David Funder welcomed the e-mail, while Norbert Schwarz, one of its recipients, said he would take part only if the effort was not directed at one single area of research.⁠[13]

In 2013 President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom; the White House citation said that alongside Amos Tversky he applied cognitive psychology to economic analysis, laying the foundation for a new field of research.⁠[14]

Ulrich Schimmack of the University of Toronto analyzed each priming study cited in Thinking, Fast and Slow and found that most offered little statistical evidence; Kahneman later acknowledged having placed too much trust in “underpowered studies with unreasonably small samples.”⁠[15]

On February 9, 2018, his wife, the cognitive psychologist Anne Treisman, died in New York City; Treisman had joined Princeton in 1993 and received the National Medal of Science in 2013.⁠[16]

On January 14, 2020, he appeared on episode 65 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; topics included lessons about human behavior from World War II, System 1 and System 2, deep learning, autonomous driving, the experiencing and remembering selves, the replication crisis in psychology, and a test for AGI.⁠[17]

On May 18, 2021, Little, Brown Spark published Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, which he co-wrote with Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein; the book defines “noise” as variability in judgments that should be identical.⁠[18]

In March 2023 Kahneman and Matthew Killingsworth, whose earlier work had reached the opposite conclusion, re-examined both datasets in an adversarial collaboration published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finding that well-being rises with income for most people but that among the unhappiest, money helps stave off unhappiness only up to a point.⁠[19]

Kahneman died on March 27, 2024, twenty-two days after his ninetieth birthday; Princeton’s Kahneman-Treisman Center for Behavioral Science & Public Policy bears his name and that of his wife, Anne Treisman.⁠[10]

He was survived by his partner, Barbara Tversky, his son, Michael Kahneman, his daughter, Lenore Shoham, and other relatives.⁠[9]

Princeton University: Official website: https://www.princeton.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[2]

Kahneman-Treisman Center for Behavioral Science & Public Policy: Official website: https://behavioralpolicy.princeton.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[10]