Hillel J. Einhorn (1941-1987)

Presents an obituary for Hillel Einhorn, who died of Hodgkin's disease at the age of 45. Between two battles with cancer, Einhorn contributed greatly to the development of the field of behavioral decision theory. Apart from visiting appointments at Carnegie-Mellon University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Einhorn spent his entire professional career at the University of Chicago. Three themes could be said to underlie his work. First, he sought to integrate psychological principles into models of decision making and to bring decision research into the mainstream of psychology. Second, guided by a strong aesthetic sense, he had a deep appreciation for the latent simplicity, beauty, and efficacy of many natural processes even when observable behaviors seem complex or chaotic. Third, although he greatly admired rigorous experimental work, he was acutely aware that there can be critical differences between decision making under laboratory conditions and decision making in the real world. Einhorn died in 1987. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)