Ernest Becker
| Ernest Becker | |
|---|---|
| Born |
September 27, 1924 Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | March 6, 1974 (aged 49) Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada |
| Residence | Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada |
| Alma mater | Syracuse University |
| Known for | Terror management theory |
| Notable work | The Denial of Death |
| Spouse(s) | Marie Becker-Pos |
| Awards | Pulitzer Prize (1974) |
| Website | The Ernest Becker Foundation |
Ernest Becker (September 27, 1924 – March 6, 1974) was a Jewish-American cultural anthropologist and writer. He is noted for his 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death.
Becker was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Jewish immigrant parents. After completing military service, in which he served in the infantry and helped to liberate a Nazi concentration camp, he attended Syracuse University in New York. Upon graduation he joined the US Embassy in Paris as an administrative officer. In his early 30s, he returned to Syracuse University to pursue graduate studies in cultural anthropology. He completed his Ph.D. in 1960. The first of his nine books, Zen: A Rational Critique (1961) was based on his doctoral dissertation. After Syracuse, he became a professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
After graduating from Syracuse University in 1960, Becker began his career as a teaching professor and writer. Becker taught at Syracuse University for a few years before eventually being fired in 1963 for siding with his mentor Thomas Szasz in the psychotherapy disputes. In 1965, Becker acquired a position at the University of California, Berkeley in the anthropology program. However, trouble again arose between him and the administration, leading to his departure from the university. At the time, thousands of students petitioned to keep Becker at the school and offered to pay his salary, but the petition did not succeed in retaining Becker. In 1967, he taught at San Francisco State’s Department of Psychology until January 1969 when he resigned in protest against the administration’s stringent policies against the student demonstrations.
In 1969, Becker began a professorship at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, where he would spend the remaining years of his academic life. During the next five years, he wrote his 1974 Pulitzer Prize–winning work, The Denial of Death. Additionally, he worked on the second edition to The Birth and Death of Meaning, and wrote Escape from Evil. In November 1972, Ernest Becker was diagnosed with cancer.
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