Amartya Sen

Amartya Kumar Sen
Sen in 2000
Born	Amartya Kumar Sen (1933-11-03) 3 November 1933 (age 83) Shantiniketan, British India (present-day West Bengal)
Nationality	Indian
Spouse(s)	Nabaneeta Dev (1958–1976) Eva Colorni (1978–1985) Emma 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
Influenced	List Tony Atkinson Kaushik Basu Jean Drèze Esther Duflo Ben Fine Nancy Folbre Robin Hahnel Mahbub ul Haq Martha Nussbaum Prasanta Pattanaik Kotaro Suzumura Philip Pettit Ha-Joon Chang
Contributions	Human development theory
Awards	Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1998) Bharat Ratna (1999) National Humanities Medal (2012)
Information at IDEAS / RePEc
Amartya Sen's voice from the BBC programme Start the Week, 7 January 2013

Amartya Kumar Sen (pronounced ˈɔmort:o ˈʃen; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher of Bengali ethnicity, 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 was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 and Bharat Ratna in 1999 for his work in welfare economics.

He was also awarded the inaugural Charleston-EFG John Maynard Keynes Prize in recognition of his work on welfare economics in February 2015 during a reception at the Royal Academy in the UK. He served as the Chancellor of Nalanda University.

He is currently the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. He also serves in the faculty of Harvard Law School. 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.

Sen was born in a Bengali kayastha family in Manikganj (in British India, now Bangladesh), 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.