Paul Ekman

Paul Ekman (born February 15, 1934) is an American psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco who is a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. He has created an "atlas of emotions" with more than ten thousand facial expressions, and has gained a reputation as "the best human lie detector in the world".

Early life and education

Ekman was born in 1934 in Washington, D.C., and grew up in a Jewish family. He studied at the University of Chicago and New York University. He earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Adelphi University in 1958.

Career

Ekman served as a professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) until his retirement in 2004. He is currently a professor emeritus at UCSF.

Ekman is best known for his work studying facial expressions and emotion. In the 1960s, he developed with Wallace V. Friesen the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to taxonomize every conceivable human facial expression. Ekman's work on facial expressions had a profound impact on fields like anthropology, psychology, and computer science, leading to new understandings of emotion, lie detection, and artificial intelligence.

Personal life

Ekman is married to Mary Ann Mason. They have one child together.

Awards and honors

Ekman has been honored with numerous awards and honors throughout his career, including the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 1991 and the William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science in 2009.

Publications

Ekman has authored or co-authored more than 14 books and over 170 articles. His most notable works include "Emotions Revealed" and "Telling Lies".

See also

• Microexpression
• Nonverbal communication
• Lie detection

External links

• Official website

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