Renowned Israeli-American psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 for his innovative application of psychological methods to the field of economics, passed away on March 27 at the age of 90. His death was confirmed by his stepdaughter Deborah Treisman, an editor at the New Yorker.
Kahneman was born in Tel Aviv in 1934 and received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and psychology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1954. He later worked in the psychological unit of the Israeli Defense Forces, where he developed questionnaires to assess conscripts’ personalities. In 1958, he moved to the United States to pursue a PhD in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley while maintaining his connections with Israel by working at the Hebrew University.
As one of the pioneers of behavioral economics, Kahneman was instrumental in applying psychological principles to economic decision-making. His groundbreaking studies on judgment and decision-making under uncertainty earned him the Nobel Prize in Economics, making him the first psychologist to receive this prestigious award. Despite conducting his research as a psychologist rather than an economist, Kahneman’s work had a profound impact on the field of economics.