Amartya Sen Biography

Amartya Sen Biography

Amartya Sen is one of the renowned economists and philosophers who belonged to India. He was born on 3 November 1933 in a Bengali Brahmin family in West Bengal, India. His family lived in Wari and Manikgani, Dhaka, present-day Bangladesh. His father’s name was Ashutosh Sen, the famous professor of Chemistry at Dhaka University, and his mother was Amita Sen, a housewife. Ashutosh Sen had a close association with Rabindranath Tagore. He worked in Bengal Government institutions. However, his family migrated to Santiniketan in 1945. His grandfather was Kshiti Mohan Sen, a well-known scholar in those days. His father also worked as the Vice Chancellor of Delhi University.

The National Poet Rabindranath Tagore named the child Amartya Sen, which means immortal in the Bengali language. He has been working in economics and is an advisor to India, England and the United States of America. Primarily, he is working to improve the social justice and economic status of India’s impoverished people. Currently, he is an Economic professor at the University of Harvard and faculty at Harvard Law School. His contribution to the Economic made him awarded the Noble Prize in 1998. The following year, the Indian Government awarded the Bharat Ratna, the highest citizen award in India.

Amartya Sen Education

In 1940, Sen joined St Gregory’s School in Dhaka. Later, he joined Santiniketan, which Rabindranath Tagore founded. The school was unique, and the education system had advanced features. The teachers trained the students to learn knowledge rather than focusing on examinations. However, after the death of Tagore, the school concentrated on teaching the students to focus on competitive tests and stress-based education. This embarrassed Amartya Sen., So he joined Presidency College, Kolkata, in 1951. There he studied Economics and earned a B.A. degree. While pursuing a B.A. degree, Sen was diagnosed with oral cancer, took horrible radiation treatment, and finally survived. Then he wanted to study at Trinity College, Cambridge.

So he went to England in 1953 and completed another pure economics degree. While he was pursuing PhD at Cambridge, the newly created Jadavpur University in Calcutta, management offered him to work as an Economic professor. So he returned to India and joined the university as the head of the Economics Department. In the meantime, he was elected to a Fellowship Prize at Trinity College. So he went to England in 1959 and studied philosophy and mathematical logic. He was interested in philosophy and applied philosophical theories to economics in his later books.

Amartya Sen’s Personal Life

Amartya Sen’s personal life differs significantly from India’s tradition and culture. He married three times and had four children. Three are the daughters and a son. At first, he married the famous Indian writer and scholar Nabaneeta Dev Sen. They had two daughters Antara, a renowned journalist and publisher. Another daughter Nandana is a Bollywood actress well-known to the Indians. However, their marriage broke up, and both chose their professions. In 1971, he moved to London to work at Harward University and again married Eva Colorni, an Economist, in 1978.

They had two children, Kabir and Indrani. Unfortunately, the second marriage was also not completed fruitfully; Eva died of cancer in 1985. The third time he married the History Professor at Harvard University, Emma Georgina Rothschild, in 1991. He is very fond of spending time in Santiniketan in West Bengal during the Winter Holidays. Amartya Sen rides the bike himself and relaxes depending on the far sites. He is atheistic and strongly argues in favour of atheism. He didn’t believe in the presence of God. In various interviews, he strongly opposed religious concepts.