Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen is a Noble Laureat. His full name is Amarta Kumar Sen. He was awarded Noble Prize for his contribution of economics in 1998. He is also a philosopher. He taught and worked in India, United Kingdom and the United States since 1972. He has made contribution to welfare economics, social choice theory, economic and social justice, economic theories of famines and index of measure of well-being of citizens of developing countries. He is currently Professor of Thomas W. Lamont University at Havard University. He is a member of faculty of Harvard Law School. He is Fellow of Trinity College of Cambridge. He was awarded Bharat Ratna in 1999 for his work in welfare economics. Sen was awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science for most valuable contribution to Political Science.
He was born in a Bengali Baidya family in Santniketan in West Bengal, India, on the campus on Rabindranath Tagore's Viswa-Bharati University on house of his grandfather Kshiti Mohan Sen. Rabindranath Tagore gave Amartya Sen his name, Amartya which means "immortal". Sen's family was from Wari and Manikganj, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Sen's father name was Ashutosh Sen was a Professor of Chemistry of University of Dhaka, who moved with his family to West Bengal in 1945 and worked at various government institutions, including the West Bengal Public Service Commission and the Union Public Service Commission. Sen's mother Amita Sen was the daoghter 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 Delhi 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 Patha Bhavana, Santiniketan. The school had many progressive features: at the school, any focus on examinations or competitive testing was deeply frowned upon. In addition, the school stressed cultural diversity, and embraced influences from the rest of the world. In 1951, he went to Presidency College, Kolkata, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics with first class, with a minor in Mathematics, as a graduating, as a graduating student of the University of Calcutta. While at Presidency, Sen was diagnosed with oral cancer and given a 15% chance of living five years. With radiation treatment, he survived, and in 1953 he moved to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he earned a second Bachelor of Arts in Pure Economics in 1955 with a first class, topping the list as well. He was elected President of the Cambridge Majlis. While Sen was officially PhD student at Cambridge, he was offered the position of Professor and Head of the Department of Economics of newly created Jadavpur University, Calcutta and he became the youngest chairmen to head the Department of Economics. He served in that position, starting the new Economics Department, during 1956 to 1958.
Meanwhile, Sen was elected to a Prize Fellowship at Trinity College, which gave him four years of freedom to do anything he liked; he made the radical decision to study Philosophy.