Carl Kaysen was born on 5 March 1920 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was married to Ruth Butler and Annette Neutra. He died on 8 February 2010 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
He was a Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for 34 years from 1976 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was director of the prestigious Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University from 1966 to 1976 in Princeton, New Jersey. He was also a professor at Harvard University from 1947 to 1966. He served two years as deputy national security adviser in the Kennedy administration at the White House in Washington D.C. from 1961 until 1963.