Amartya Kumar Sen (Bengali: ; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and

philosopher who since 1972 has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United
States. He has made contributions to welfare economics, social choice
theory,economic and social justice, economic theories of famines, and indexes of the measure of
well-being of citizens of developing countries. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in
Economic Sciences in 1998 for his work in welfare economics.
He is currently the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and
Philosophy at Harvard University. He serves as the chancellor of Nalanda University. He is also a
senior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, a distinguished fellow of All Souls College,
Oxford, an honorary fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College,
Cambridge, where he served as Master from 1998 to 2004.[4] He is also known for being one of
the strongest champions of rationalism, secularism, andegalitarianism in India, and has
condemned the ghettoization of Ambedkar as a Dalit leader.
Contents
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1 Early life and education

2 Professorships

3 Membership and associations

4 Research

5 Perceptions: in comparisons

6 India: university mentor for growth and revival

o

6.1 Nalanda International University Project

7 Media and culture

8 Personal life and beliefs

9 Academic achievements, awards and honours

10 Bibliography
o

10.1 Books

10.2 Chapters in books

10.3 Journal articles

10.4 Lecture transcripts

10.5 Papers

10.6 Other

11 See also

12 References

13 Further reading

14 External links

Early life and education[edit]

Sen was born in a Bengali Vaidya family in Santiniketan, West Bengal, India, to Ashutosh Sen
and Amita Sen. Rabindranath Tagoregave Amartya Sen his name (Bengali morto, lit.
"immortal"). Sen's family was from Wari and Manikganj, Dhaka, both in present-day Bangladesh.
His father Ashutosh Sen was a professor of chemistry at Dhaka University who moved with his
family to West Bengalin 1945 and worked at various government institutions, including the West
Bengal Public Service Commission (of which he was the chairman), and the Union Public
Service Commission. Sen's mother Amita Sen was the daughter of Kshiti Mohan Sen, a wellknown scholar of ancient and medieval India and close associate of Rabindranath Tagore. He
served as the Vice Chancellor of Visva-Bharati University for some years.
Sen began his high-school education at St Gregory's School in Dhaka in 1940. From fall 1941,
Sen studied at Visva-Bharati University school. He later went to Presidency College, Kolkata,
where earned a B.A. in Economics, with a minor in Mathematics. In 1953, he moved to Trinity
College, Cambridge, where he earned a second B.A. in Economics in 1955. He was elected
President of the Cambridge Majlis. While Sen was officially a Ph.D. student at Cam