Amartya Sen is the only Indian to have won the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Born on November 3, 1933, Sen won the Nobel in 1998, "for his contributions to welfare economics" - for his work on famine, human development theory, welfare economics, the underlying mechanisms of poverty, and political liberalism.
From 1998 to 2004 he was Master of Trinity College at Cambridge University, becoming the first Asian academic to head an Oxbridge college. Amartya Sen is interested in the debate over globalisation.
He is a former honorary president of Oxfam.
Among his many contributions to development economics, Sen has produced work on gender inequality.
He is currently the Lamont University Professor at Harvard University. Amartya Sen's books have been translated into more than thirty languages. He is a trustee of Economists for Peace and Security.
Sen was born in Santiniketan, West Bengal, the University town established by poet Rabindranath Tagore, another Indian Nobel Prize winner. His ancestral home was in Wari, Dhaka in modern-day Bangladesh. Rabindranath Tagore is said to have given Amartya Sen his name ('Amartya' meaning 'immortal').
Image: Amartya Sen talks on the phone after hearing the news of his Nobel win | Photograph: Henny Ray Abrams/AFP/Getty Images
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