James T. Reason CBE (born 1 May 1938)^[1] is a former professor of psychology at the University of Manchester, from where he graduated in 1962 and where he was a tenured professor from 1977 until 2001. He wrote books on human error,^[2] including such aspects as absent-mindedness, aviation human factors, maintenance errors, and risk management for organizational accidents.^[3] In 2003, he was awarded an honorary DSc by the University of Aberdeen. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the British Psychological Society, the Royal Aeronautical Society, and the Royal College of General Practitioners. He received a CBE in 2003 for his services in the reduction of the risks in health care. In 2011 he was elected an honorary fellow of the Safety and Reliability Society.^[4]

Among his many contributions is the introduction of the Swiss cheese model, a conceptual framework for the description of accidents based on the notion that accidents will happen only if multiple barriers fail, thus creating a path from an initiating cause all the way to the ultimate, unwanted consequences, such as harm to people, assets, the environment, etc.^[2] Reason also described the first fully developed theory of a just culture in his 1997 book, Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents.^[3]