Jon Elster - Biography

Biography

Elster earned his PhD from the Sorbonne in Paris with a dissertation on Marx under the direction of Raymond Aron. Elster was a member of the September Group for many years but left in the early 1990s. Elster previously taught at the University of Oslo in the department of history and held an endowed chair at the University of Chicago, teaching in the departments of philosophy and political science. He is now Robert K. Merton Professor of Social Sciences with appointments in Political Science and Philosophy at Columbia University and professeur titulaire at the Collège de France. He was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize in 1997.

He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

He is the son of journalist/author and CEO of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation Torolf Elster and poet Magli Elster.

In 2010, Elster received a doctorate honoris causa from Universidad Torcuato di Tella.

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