Tversky and Kahneman's work sold a generation of intellectuals, including a lot of smart young economists, on a new model of human nature. Thaler, for his part, didn't need to be sold: the Israelis had him at hello. He took their work, and championed them, and created an entire field.
Twenty years ago, after Thaler was given a tenured job at the University of Chicago, a newspaper reporter asked an older, more distinguished Chicago economist, who clearly saw little of use in behavioral economics, why he hadn't blocked Thaler's appointment. "Because each generation has got to make its own mistakes," he said. Today Thaler is the president of the American Economic Association, and a perennial candidate for the Nobel. His rise may be just another example of the power of human misjudgment. Or he might be onto something. Either way, he's been wildly disruptive.