The character arc of Daniel Kahneman
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born on 5 March 1934 in Tel Aviv, while his mother was visiting family, to Lithuanian Jewish parents who had emigrated to France in the early 1920s. Between then and his death sit a childhood in France, a career in psychology, a long partnership with Amos Tversky that established a cognitive basis for common human errors, prospect theory, a professorship at Princeton, the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, a place on a list of top global thinkers, a bestselling book in 2011 at seventy seven, and a death he chose. The line below draws the whole story.
Drag along the line to move, pinch or use the buttons to look closer. Tap the line to pluck it, or any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of his life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who was Daniel Kahneman?
He never took an economics course. He won the Nobel Prize in it.
He was born in Tel Aviv in 1934 while his mother was visiting her family. His parents were Lithuanian Jews who had emigrated to France in the early 1920s, and he grew up there. The detail matters: a Jewish child in France in the early 1940s, which is a childhood spent being noticed for the wrong reasons.
He became a psychologist, and his subject was the psychology of judgment and decision making. With Amos Tversky, and others, he established a cognitive basis for the common errors people make, the ones that arise from mental shortcuts and biases, and the two of them developed prospect theory, which describes how people actually choose between risky options rather than how the textbooks said they should.
His published findings challenged the assumption of human rationality that was running through modern economic theory. That is why, in 2002, a psychologist who had never taken a course in economics was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with Vernon Smith. He became known as the grandfather of behavioural economics. In 2015 a magazine listed him as the seventh most influential economist in the world, which for a psychologist is an unusual sentence.
He was professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton, a founding partner of a consulting company, and married to the cognitive psychologist Anne Treisman, who died in 2018. In 2011 he was named one of the top global thinkers and published Thinking, Fast and Slow, a summary of a lifetime of research, which became a bestseller. He was seventy seven.
He died on 27 March 2024, three weeks after his ninetieth birthday. Having watched dementia take both his mother and his wife, he chose an assisted death, at an organisation in Switzerland. The manner and location were only made public in March 2025. He decided how it ended, which is of a piece with a life spent studying how people decide.
The moments
Daniel Kahneman's timeline.
The 1940s
A Jewish child in France
Setback, and it changed everything. A Jewish boy in France in the early 1940s.
The 1960s
Work alone, or with Tversky
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: work as a pair, taken, or build his own programme. The partnership produced prospect theory and, eventually, a Nobel Prize.
The partnership with Tversky
Milestone, and it changed everything. Two psychologists arguing with each other, for thirty years.
The 1970s
Prospect theory
Milestone, and it changed everything. A description of how people really choose, rather than how they should.
The 1980s
The heuristics book
Milestone, and it changed his direction. The book that gave a generation of researchers their vocabulary.
The 1990s
Princeton
Milestone, and it changed his direction. A chair in psychology and public affairs at Princeton.
The focusing illusion
Milestone. Why nothing in life matters as much as you think it will while you think about it.
The 2000s
The Nobel Prize
Milestone, and it changed everything. A psychologist, given the Nobel Prize in economics.
Grandfather of a field
Milestone, and it changed his direction. Seventh most influential economist alive, with no economics degree.
The 2010s
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Milestone, and it changed everything. Seventy seven years old, and the book that put it all in one place.
Anne Treisman dies
Setback, and it changed everything. His wife, herself a distinguished scientist, gone.
The 2020s
A death he chose
Milestone, and it changed everything. He studied how people decide, and he decided this too.
The work is on every economics reading list now, and the arguments he started are still being had. What he set moving is a correction to the idea that people are rational, made by a psychologist who walked into economics without a qualification in it and rebuilt the assumptions from the bottom.
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Daniel Kahneman: frequently asked questions
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More character arcs
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Sources
- Daniel Kahneman, English Wikipedia biography.
- Nobel Prize records for the 2002 Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with Vernon L. Smith.
- Reporting of March 2025 on the manner and location of his death.
- An adult child's illness recorded in the source is deliberately left off this page.