Nassim Nicholas Taleb, born on September 12, 1960, is a Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former option trader, and risk analyst. His work focuses on problems of randomness, probability, and uncertainty. He is known for his work in mathematical finance and for developing the theory of "Black Swan" events, which are unpredictable events of large magnitude and consequence. Taleb advocates for building "antifragile" systems that benefit from disorder and uncertainty.
Taleb is currently a Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering and scientific advisor for Universa Investments. He is the author of the Incerto, a multi-volume philosophical essay on uncertainty, which includes Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Antifragile, The Bed of Procrustes, and Skin in the Game. Taleb has also written over 50 scholarly papers in various fields, including statistical physics, quantitative finance, and ethics. In late 2025, Taleb warned investors to hedge against a stock-market crash due to structural issues such as the US debt burden.
