MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI (1934-2021) was Claremont Graduate University’s Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Management as well as founder and co-director of the Quality of Life Research Center (QLRC), a nonprofit research institute that studies positive psychology, which analyzes human strengths such as optimism, creativity, intrinsic motivation, and responsibility.
Csikszentmihalyi is known for his research on the experience of flow, a psychological concept he introduced in his bestselling book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial, 1990). Though published in the early 1990s, Flow has continued to draw attention from both researchers and the general public and has been translated into more than twenty languages. Since then, he has written numerous books and articles on managing flow.
He was the principal investigator on eight grants in the last ten years, receiving funding from the Public Health Service, the Atlantic Philanthropies, the Getty Trust, the Sloan Foundation, the W. T. Grant Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation, for a total of over $10 million. He was a member of the American Academy of Education, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Leisure Studies.
