Israeli-American psychologist and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman died on Wednesday, March 27, at the age of 90. His stepdaughter, Deborah Treisman, confirmed his death. Daniel Kahneman was born in 1934 in Tel Aviv.
His family returned to British Palestine in 1948, before the creation of the State of Israel.
In 1954, Kahneman graduated from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, with a degree in psychology. He later joined the Israel Defense Forces. There, they created a special system to check the mentality of the army recruits. After receiving his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, he joined the Hebrew University as a professor.
Kahneman’s famous book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ was published in 2011. His research paper published last year with other authors warning about artificial intelligence also received a response.
Kahneman studied people’s habits, decision-making patterns, and how they affect the economy (behavioral economics). Especially his work revolves around whether one makes a decision or not without knowing much about what kind of income people are happier with.
He won the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his research on ‘Prospect Theory’ (the decision-making process under uncertainty).
Daniel has been working since 1993 at Princeton University in New Jersey, USA. Princeton University professor Eldar Shafir said, “Daniel was a genius, a star at Princeton, a brilliant man, and a great colleague and friend.” Since his arrival, many areas of the social sciences have not been the same. I will miss him very much.
