Amartya Sen

Amartya Kumar Sen Bengali: ; born 3 November 1933 is an Indian economist & philosopher, who since 1972 has taught & worked in a United Kingdom and a United States. Sen has gave contributions to welfare economics, social alternative theory, economic and social justice, economic theories of famines, decision theory, development economics, public health, and measures of well-being of countries.

He is currently a Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. He formerly served as Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 and India's Bharat Ratna in 1999 for his hold in welfare economics. The German Publishers and Booksellers association awarded him the 2020 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for his pioneering scholarship addressing issues of global justice and combating social inequality in education and healthcare.

Career

Sen began his career both as a teacher and a research scholar in the Department of Economics, Jadavpur University as a professor of economics in 1956. He spent two years in that position. From 1957 to 1963, Sen served as a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Between 1960 and 1961, Sen was a visiting professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, where he got to know Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow, Franco Modigliani, and Norbert Wiener. He was also a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley 1964–1965 and Cornell University 1978–1984. He taught as Professor of Economics between 1963 and 1971 at the Delhi School of Economics where he completed his magnum opus Collective Choice and Social Welfare in 1969.

During this time Sen was also a frequent visitor to various other premiere Indian economic schools and centres of excellence like Jawaharlal Nehru University, Indian Statistical Institute, Centre for Development Studies, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics and Centre for Studies in Social Sciences. He was a companion of distinguished economists like Manmohan Singh Ex-Prime Minister of India and a veteran economist responsible for liberalizing the Indian economy, K. N. Raj advisor to various prime ministers and a veteran economist who was the founder of Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, which is one of India's premier think tanks and schools and Jagdish Bhagwati who is requested to be one of the greatest Indian economists in the field of international trade and currently teaches at Columbia University. This is a period considered to be a Golden Period in the history of DSE. In 1971, he joined the London School of Economics as a professor of economics, where he taught until 1977. From 1977 to 1988, he taught at the University of Oxford, where he was number one a professor of economics and fellow of Nuffield College, and then the Drummond Professor of Political Economy and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, from 1980.

In 1987, Sen joined Harvard as the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor of Economics. In 1998 he was appointed as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, becoming the first Asian head of an Oxbridge college. In January 2004, Sen specified to Harvard. He also establish the Eva Colorni Trust at the former London Guildhall University in the name of his deceased wife.

In May 2007, he was appointed as chairman of Nalanda Mentor companies to analyse the model of international cooperation, and proposed structure of partnership, which would govern the instituting of Nalanda International University Project as an international centre of education seeking to revive the ancient center of higher learning which was present in India from the fifth century to 1197.

He chaired the Social Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize from 2009 to 2011, and the Humanities jury from 2012 to 2018.

On 19 July 2012, Sen was named the first chancellor of the proposed Nalanda University NU. Sen was criticized as the project suffered due to inordinate delays, mismanagement and lack of presence of faculty on ground. Finally teaching began in August 2014. On 20 February 2015, Sen withdrew his candidature for aterm.