Amos Tversky

Amos Tversky was born in 1937 in Haifa

Tversky was born in Haifa in 1937. His father, Yosef Tversky, was a veterinarian, and his mother, Jenia Tversky, was a social worker who later served in the Knesset for Mapai. In high school he studied with the critic Baruch Kurzweil.

After high school he joined the IDF and served in the Paratroopers Brigade through Nahal. He became a platoon commander and was decorated for saving one of his soldiers during a 1956 training exercise. He fought in the Suez Crisis and the Six-Day War and served in a psychology unit in the Yom Kippur War.

He earned a bachelor's degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1961 and a doctorate in psychology from the University of Michigan in 1965. He then taught at the Hebrew University. In 1978 he joined the psychology department at Stanford University, where he stayed for the rest of his career.

His early work dealt with the foundations of measurement. With Kahneman he studied judgment under uncertainty, publishing a 1974 paper in Science and a 1979 paper on prospect theory. Kahneman received the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for work they did together.

In 1963 he married the psychologist Barbara Gans, and they had three children. He died of melanoma in 1996.