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Amartya Kumar Sen CH  was at born 3 November 1933 and received the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on welfare economics. He is currently the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. He is also a fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, where from 1998 to 2004 he was Master, the first Indian academic to head an Oxbridge  college.

He is known as “the Mother Teresa of Economics” for his work on famine, human development theory, welfare economics, the underlying mechanisms of poverty, gender inequality, and political liberalism.

Amartya Sen’s books have been translated into more than thirty languages. He is a trustee of Economists for Peace and Security. He has received over 80 honorary doctorates.

Sen hails from a distinguished family from East Bengal (present-day Bangladesh). His maternal grandfather Kshitimohan Sen was a renowned scholar of medieval Indian literature, an authority on the philosophy of Hinduism. He was a close associate of Rabindranath Tagore in Santiniketan  and became the second vice chancellor of Visva-Bharati University. His maternal grandfather was an uncle of the first Chief Election Commissioner of India, Sukumar Sen and the Law Minister of India, Ashoke Kumar Sen. Sen’s father was Ashutosh Sen and his mother was Amita Sen, who were born at Manikganj, Dhaka. His father taught chemistry at Dhaka University and became Chairman of the West Bengal Public Services Commission. Sen’s first wife was Nabaneeta Dev Sen, an Indian writer and scholar, with whom he had two children: Antara, a journalist and publisher, and Nandana, a Bollywood  actor. Their marriage broke up shortly after they moved to London in 1971. In 1973, he married his second wife, Eva Colorni, who died from stomach cancer quite suddenly in 1985. They had two children, Indrani, a journalist in New York, and Kabir, who teaches music at Shady Hill School. His present wife, Emma Georgina Rothschild, is an economic historian, an expert on Adam Smith and Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge.

Sen usually spends winter holidays at his home in Santiniketan in West Bengal, India, where he likes to go on long bike rides, and maintains a house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he and Emma spend the spring and long vacations. Asked how he relaxes, he replies: “I read a lot and like arguing with people.”

Honours and awards

• * He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his work in welfare economics in 1998.
• * He received the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India in 1999.
• * In 1999 he received honorary citizenship of Bangladesh from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in recognition of his achievements in winning the Nobel Prize, and given that his family origins were in what has become the modern state of Bangladesh
• * He received the 2000 Leontief Prize for his outstanding contribution to economic theory from the Global Development and Environment Institute.
• * He was the 351st Commencement Speaker of Harvard University.
• * In 2002 he received the International Humanist Award from the International Humanist and Ethical Union.
• * Eisenhower Medal, for Leadership and Service USA, 2000;
• * Companion of Honour, UK, 2000.
• * In 2003, he was conferred the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Indian Chamber of Commerce.
• * Life Time Achievement award by Bangkok-based United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP)
• * In 2009, Sen became a member of the SNV Netherlands Development Organisation’s International Advisory Board to contribute to the organisation’s work in poverty reduction and sustainable development.[16]
• * He was chosen to deliver the Demos Annual Lecture 2010

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