Ernest Becker

Ernest Becker was an American cultural anthropologist, psychoanalyst, and author. He was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1924. He served in the infantry during World War II and helped liberate a Nazi concentration camp. After the war, he attended Syracuse University and received his PhD in anthropology in 1960. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and then at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. He died of cancer in 1974 at the age of 49.

Becker's most famous book is The Denial of Death, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974. The book explores the human fear of death and the ways in which we try to deny it. Becker argued that the fear of death is the root of all human motivation and that it shapes our values, beliefs, and behaviors.

Becker's work has been influential in a number of fields, including anthropology, psychology, sociology, and philosophy. He is considered one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century.