Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman dies at 90

March 28 (UPI) -- Pioneering psychology scholar Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work applying cognitive psychology to economic analysis, has died. He was 90 years old.

The Kahneman-Treisman Center For Behavioral Science and Public Policy at Princeton University announced he "died peacefully" Thursday, just 22 days after his 90th birthday. No cause nor location of death was given.

"Danny was a giant in the field, a Princeton star, a brilliant man, and a great colleague and friend," Eldar Shafir, a behavioral science and public policy profession at Princeton, said in a statement.

"Many areas in the social sciences simply have not been the same since he arrived on the scene. He will be greatly missed."

Kahneman was born in Te Aviv on March 5, 1934, and lived in France during the Nazi occupation before being able to escape to what was then called the British Mandate of Palestine, according to his autobiography on the Nobel Prize website.

He began his most serious work in the 1960s while collaborating with his longtime colleague Amos Tversky.

"The experience was magical," Kahneman wrote. "I had enjoyed collaborative work before but this was something different."

Together, they would write eight journals between 1971 and 1981, he said, the significance of which trumped any work they did individually.

Kahneman focused on examining the relationship between cognitive psychology and the act of making decisions under uncertainty, which birthed a new branch of economics called prospect theory, according to the Nobel Prize website.

He would end up earning the Nobel Prize in economics for his work in 2002 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013 by then-President Barack Obama.

He is also the author of the award-winning Thinking, fast and slow, which was published in 2011 and examines how humans make decisions and the thinking process that goes into them into those decisions.

The Kahneman-Treisman Center said it will plan an on-campus celebration of Kahneman's life and work.