Amartya Kumar Sen

Amartya Kumar Sen
Sen in 2000
Born	Amartya Kumar Sen (1933-11-03) 3 November 1933 (age 83) Santiniketan, British India
Nationality	Indian
Spouse(s)	Nabaneeta Dev Sen (m. 1958; div. 1976) Eva Colorni (m. 1978; her death 1985) Emma Georgina Rothschild (m. 1991)
Institution	List Harvard University University of Cambridge London School of Economics Jadavpur University Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cornell University University of Oxford Delhi School of Economics University of Calcutta University of California, Berkeley Stanford University Nalanda University
Field	Welfare economics, development economics, ethics
School or tradition	Capability approach
Alma mater	Presidency College of the University of Calcutta (BA), Trinity College, Cambridge (BA, MA, PhD)
Influences	List Rabindranath Tagore B. R. Ambedkar John Maynard Keynes John Rawls Peter Bauer John Stuart Mill Mary Wollstonecraft Kenneth Arrow Piero Sraffa Adam Smith Karl Marx Martha Nussbaum
Contributions	Human development theory
Awards	Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1998) Bharat Ratna (1999) National Humanities Medal (2012) Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science (2017)
Information at IDEAS / RePEc
Amartya Sen's voice from the BBC programme Start the Week, 7 January 2013
Notes
Children: Antara Dev Sen (daughter) Nandana Sen (daughter) Indrani (daughter) Kabir (son)

Amartya Kumar Sen (Bengali: [ˈɔmort:o ˈʃen]; 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. Sen 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 is currently the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor at Harvard University and member of faculty at Harvard Law School. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 and India's Bharat Ratna in 1999 for his work in welfare economics. In 2017, Sen was awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science for most valuable contribution to Political Science.

Sen was born in a Bengali kayastha family in Santiniketan in West Bengal, India, on the campus on Rabindranath Tagore's Viswa-Bharati University, to Ashutosh Sen and Amita Sen. Rabindranath Tagore gave Amartya Sen his name (Bengali অমর্ত্য ômorto, 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 Bengal in 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 well-known 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.