James Reason

We have learned, with sadness, of the death of Professor James Reason, who taught psychology at Leicester from 1967 to 1977.

James Reason was born James Tootle on 1 May 1938 in Hertfordshire, taking his grandfather’s surname after the death of both his parents. He graduated from the University of Manchester in 1962 and received his PhD at Leicester in 1967, after which he stayed on as a lecturer for another decade, conducting research into motion sickness.

In 1977 he returned to Manchester where he remained for the rest of his long and illustrious career, specialising in the study of accidents and human error. He is most famous for his ‘Swiss cheese’ model of error, which states that accidents are often caused by a succession of small failures, like multiple ‘holes’ lining up in consecutive ‘slices’.

Professor Reason’s autobiography A Life in Error: From Little Slips to Big Disasters was published in 2013. He passed away on 4 February 2025, aged 86. 

More on Professor James Reason’s life and work:

• New York Times obituary
• IOSH obituary