Psychologist and bestselling author Daniel Kahneman, whose research on how decision-making and biases can impact economics earned him a Nobel Prize, died on March 27. He was 90.
Kahneman was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, on March 5, 1934, and was raised in Paris until his family fled Nazi-occupied France. He graduated from Hebrew University in 1954 and received a doctorate in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1961. In 1993, he joined the faculty of Princeton University, where he spent much of his career. He went on to receive the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.
Kahneman was the author or coauthor of seven books, including the 2011 bestseller Thinking, Fast and Slow (FSG). In a starred review, PW called the book a "fascinating treatise" and al "lucid, marvelously readable guide to spotting—and correcting—our biased misunderstandings of the world," adding that it was written by "a giant in the field of decision research." His final book was 2021's Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement (Little, Brown Spark), written with Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein, which PW called "an intricate examination of decision-making and sound judgement."
Kahneman spent three decades collaborating with friend and fellow psychologist Amos Tversky on his prizewinning research. (Tversky died in 1996, and the Nobel is not awarded posthumously.) Kahneman and Tversky's personal and working relationship was chronicled in Michael Lewis's 2016 book The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds (W.W. Norton), which PW called "a joy to read, packed with 'aha!' moments, telling and at times hilarious details, and elegant explanations of complex experiments and theories."
He is survived by his partner, Barbara Tversky (widow of Amos); his two children, Michael Kahneman and Lenore Shoham; and four stepchildren, among them New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman.
