Goodbye to the one and only Happiness Professor

Can we actually measure well-being? What makes us happy? At what point does an income no longer contribute to one’s well-being? Is Iceland happier than France? Is there an optimal happiness level? Can we really talk of such a thing as a well-being science? Answers to all these questions would have never been possible without one person – Professor Ed Diner, who, almost single-handedly, is responsible for the flourishing of the whole field of well-being.

I first met Ed surrounded by the other four musketeers of positive psychology (Marty Seligman, Chris Peterson, George Vaillant and Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi) in 2001 at the Positive Psychology Summer Institute at Sea Ranch, California. That was also my very first trip to the US. I recall Ed laughing and saying I should not take Sea Ranch for a good representation of the US as a whole (unfortunately he turned out to be right). I remember listening to Ed laying out the foundations of well-being research, with fireworks of questions and insights breaking out in my head and catching myself on realising that a lecturer can be dead serious and hilarious at the same time. In fact, that very presentation of Ed had set the gold standard of lecturing for me for the rest of my career.

As years went by, we bumped into each other every year or two at IPPA meetings and different positive psychology events throughout the world, and I must have heard Ed speak numerous times. What never ceased to amaze me was the fact that his presentations were always new and up-to-date, even though so many other scholars around were repeating the same old song. More than that, his humility was extraordinary – he was at service of science, in the best possible sense of this term, humble before the data, constantly updating his own understanding and conclusions in line with the evolution of research.

As Todd Kashdan said in his post about Ed “Too few know his name.” This is so true. For those of us on the academic side of positive psychology, Ed was a giant. Yet, I am not that certain that when a practitioner who trains and teaches happiness in schools and companies bumps into Diener, E. on the reference lists they know its significance. So I do hope that the overwhelming tribute to Ed Diener over hundreds and thousands social media pages brings to light and celebrates the extraordinary life and accomplishments of this extraordinary man.

So, how do you define happiness?