Ernest Becker

Ernest Becker spent his career examining how the fear of death shapes human behavior and culture, bringing that inquiry together in The Denial of Death, which won the Pulitzer Prize. He was a cultural anthropologist by training rather than a psychologist, an outsider's vantage he used to argue that much of what people call civilization is an elaborate defense against mortality. He died in 1974, shortly after finishing the book that would define his legacy.