Professor Daniel Kahneman
Nobel Prize Laureate for Economics and Professor of Psychology at Princeton University
Daniel Kahneman has created an extensive body of research in the fields of psychology and economic science, work that has been recognised with the highest honors of the scholarly world and beyond, including the 2002 Nobel Prize in economic sciences. Since 1993, he has held the appointment of Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and professor of public affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, he was raised in France during the years of World War II, his family escaping to Vichy France and settling in Palestine (soon to become Israel) after the war ended.
He received his bachelor's degree in psychology and mathematics from Hebrew University, later earning a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1961.
Professor Kahneman taught at Hebrew University from 1961 to 1978, during which time he spent a year as a visiting scientist at the University of Michigan. He was on the faculty at the University of British Columbia from 1978 to 1986, then from 1986 to 1994 was a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, after which he joined the faculty at Princeton University.
In the late 1960s, he initiated a decades-long intensive collaboration with his colleague Amos Tversky, a graduate of the University of Michigan. Together, they applied theories of cognitive psychology to economic forecasting, showing that most people reject complex analysis, instead making economic decisions based on hunches, mood, or dogmatic rules-of-thumb, which Professor Kahneman described as "the susceptibility to erroneous intuitions of intelligent, sophisticated, and perceptive individuals".
His Nobel Prize was awarded for laying the foundation for a new field of research by discovering how human judgment may take shortcuts that systematically depart from basic principles of probability.
In addition to many scholarly honors, Professor Kahneman is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He is also a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the Society of Experimental Psychologists, and the Econometric Society.
Among his numerous awards are the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, the Warren Medal of the Society of Experimental Psychologists, The Hilgard Award for Career Contributions to General Psychology, and the Award of Distinguished Fellows from the American Economic Association. In noting the recognition his work in psychology has received in the field of economics, he observed that "when you live long enough, you see the impossible become reality."
