Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was Claremont Graduate University's Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Management, and former chairman of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago. For the past thirty years, up until he died in 2021, he was involved in research on topics related to optimal experience or "flow." He was the author of 18 books, which have been translated into more than 20 languages. Interest in his work outside academia has been shown by substantial articles in Psychology Today, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, Omni, Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Focus, Newsweek, and others.

Dr. Csikszentmihalyi was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Leisure Sciences. He was a Senior Fulbright Fellow and sat on several boards, including the Board of Advisers for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He appeared on a number of foreign television networks, such as the BBC and RAI (Italian television), and took part in several hourlong segments of "Nova".