Amos Tversky
Amos Tversky (1937–1996) was an Israeli cognitive psychologist and a key figure in the development of behavioural economics. He was a professor at Stanford University at the time of his death. His collaboration with daniel-kahneman over ~14 years produced the foundational works of the heuristics-and-biases research programme.
Work Referenced in This Wiki
Tversky is the co-author and intellectual co-equal behind all the foundational research in kahneman-2011-thinking-fast-and-slow. Kahneman dedicated the book “In memory of Amos Tversky.”
Collaboration with Kahneman
The Kahneman-Tversky partnership began in 1969 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Kahneman describes the collaboration as among the most productive and joyful of his life: they spent hours working together daily, testing intuitions through small-scale experiments, and checking each other’s thinking rigorously.
Key joint works:
- “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” (Science, 1974) — the founding paper of the programme
- “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk” (Econometrica, 1979) — most cited paper in economics
- “The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice” (Science, 1981) — framing effects
- “Extensional vs. Intuitive Reasoning” (Psychological Review, 1983) — conjunction fallacy (Linda problem)
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2002) was awarded to Kahneman for the joint work. Tversky was ineligible as the prize is not awarded posthumously. In his Nobel lecture, Kahneman stated that had Tversky been alive, the prize would have been shared.
Legacy
Tversky is credited with intellectual leadership in the collaboration — noted by Kahneman as “the most logical thinker, with an orientation to theory and an unfailing sense of direction.” His early death at 59 ended a collaboration that had become central to 21st-century thinking about human judgement and economic behaviour.