Google Doodle marks happiness psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's birthday

Sept. 29 (UPI) -- Friday's Google Doodle celebrates Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the Hungarian-American psychologist who studied the science of happiness, on his 89th birthday.

Csíkszentmihályi, who first tried to understand healing and joy after witnessing the horrors of World War II, is depicted in the artwork as exhaling and watching his breath cycle through the pastel-colored letters of the word "Google."

"He turned to art, philosophy, and religion as he sought answers," the website said about Csíkszentmihályi.

"In this exploration, he stumbled upon a lecture by Carl Jung, who spoke of the traumatized psyches of Europeans after World War II, and how their mental states caused them to project the UFO sightings into the sky,"

Csíkszentmihályi is the author of the bestseller Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, as well as a distinguished professor of psychology and management at Claremont Graduate University and co-director of the Quality of Life Research Center.