Amartya Sen
Nobel Laureate & Lamont University Professor & Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Harvard University

Amartya Sen is recognized as one of the most creative and innovative economists in the world today. He was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Science for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice and for investigation of the problems of society's poorest members.

A native and a citizen of India, Sen studied at Presidency College in Calcutta and at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Sen's monographs Collective Choice and Social Welfare, On Economic Inequality, and Choice, Welfare and Measurement inspired researchers to turn their attention to issues of basic welfare and produced methods of assessing poverty and deprivation that have helped to improve conditions for the poor. His book Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation established that social, political, and economic factors and not just production are at the root of many famines, and identified ways and means of comprehensively overcoming these problems.

Sen has served as Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and as President of the Econometric Society, the American Economic Association, the Indian Economic Association, and the International Economic Association. He was formerly Honorary President of Oxfam and is now its Honorary Advisor. His newest book is The Argumentative Indian, and another, Identity and Violence, is due in March 2006.