Biosketch

Nassim Taleb is a distinguished mathematical statistician, risk scholar, essayist, and former quantitative trader whose pioneering work has shaped global thinking on uncertainty, complexity, disorder, and rare events. He is the author of the Incerto, a landmark five-volume philosophical-scientific essay series, including The Black Swan, Antifragile, and Fooled by Randomness, translated into 50 languages.

Trained in mathematical finance, Taleb spent over two decades in senior roles across major financial institutions focusing on complex derivatives in addition to his own tail risk hedging business. He later transitioned to academia, where he served as Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at the Tandon School of Engineering of New York University. His technical work spans probability theory, statistical physics, quantitative finance, ethics, and epidemiology, with over 70 scholarly publications (as single or lead author).

His concepts of antifragility and convex tinkering have influenced diverse fields from engineering to health policy.