Psychologist, social economist and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman has died, aged 90. He was a pioneer in behavioral economics.
Kahneman died on Wednesday, his stepdaughter Deborah Treisman confirmed, according to the Washington Post.
He was professor emeritus of psychology at Princeton University in the USA and is considered by many to be one of the greatest thinkers of our time. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2002 for his research on behavioral economics.
Compared to the Origin of Species
Kahneman’s 2011 best-selling book, Think, fast and slowsummarizes much of his research and has been compared to Origin of species by Charles Darwin.
– Many social science fields have simply not been the same since he came on the scene. He will be deeply missed, says former colleague and professor Eldar Shafir in a press release.
Princeton University southwest of New York, where Kahneman worked until his death, confirms the death in a statement on its website.
Kahneman was born in Tel Aviv in 1934.
Nobel Prize in 2002
The Israeli-American researcher was particularly known for his research into how we humans make decisions. He described this, among other things, in Think, fast and slowwhich came out in 2011 and in English and Norwegian the following year.
Here he argues against the fact that people’s behavior is based on rational decision-making processes, but is instead often based on instinct.
In 2002, Kahneman received the Swedish Riksbank’s prize in economic science in memory of Alfred Nobel, informally known as the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. He received the award for his efforts in psychology and economics.
