PSYCHOLOGISTS from Israel

Top 2

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Israeli Psychologists of all time. This list of famous Israeli Psychologists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Daniel Kahneman (1934 - 2024)

With an HPI of 70.45, Daniel Kahneman is the most famous Israeli Psychologist.  His biography has been translated into 63 different languages on wikipedia.

Daniel Kahneman (; Hebrew: דניאל כהנמן; March 5, 1934 – March 27, 2024) was an Israeli-American psychologist best known for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making as well as behavioral economics, for which he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences together with Vernon L. Smith. Kahneman's published empirical findings challenge the assumption of human rationality prevailing in modern economic theory. Kahneman became known as the "grandfather of behavioral economics." With Amos Tversky and others, Kahneman established a cognitive basis for common human errors that arise from heuristics and biases, and developed prospect theory. In 2011, Kahneman was named by Foreign Policy magazine in its list of top global thinkers. In the same year, his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, which summarizes much of his research, was published and became a best seller. In 2015, The Economist listed him as the seventh most influential economist in the world. Kahneman was professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University's Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Kahneman was a founding partner of TGG Group, a business and philanthropy consulting company. He was married to cognitive psychologist and Royal Society Fellow Anne Treisman, who died in 2018.

2. Amos Tversky (1937 - 1996)

With an HPI of 56.05, Amos Tversky is the 2nd most famous Israeli Psychologist.  His biography has been translated into 25 different languages.

Amos Nathan Tversky (Hebrew: עמוס טברסקי; March 16, 1937 – June 2, 1996) was an Israeli cognitive and mathematical psychologist and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk. Much of his early work concerned the foundations of measurement. He was co-author of a three-volume treatise, Foundations of Measurement. His early work with Daniel Kahneman focused on the psychology of prediction and probability judgment; later they worked together to develop prospect theory, which aims to explain irrational human economic choices and is considered one of the seminal works of behavioral economics. Six years after Tversky's death, Kahneman received the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for work he did in collaboration with Amos Tversky. While Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously, Kahneman has commented that he feels "it is a joint prize. We were twinned for more than a decade." Tversky also collaborated with many leading researchers including Thomas Gilovich, Itamar Simonson, Paul Slovic and Richard Thaler. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Tversky as the 93rd most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with Edwin Boring, John Dewey, and Wilhelm Wundt.