Dr.DEBESH BHOWMIK

Dr.DEBESH BHOWMIK

Monday 3 November 2014

AMARTYA KUMAR SEN



AMARTYA KUMAR SEN



Amartya Kumar Sen (Bengali: অমর্ত্য সেন; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher who since 1972 has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United States. He has made contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, economic and social justice, economic theories of famines, and indexes of the measure of well-being of citizens of developing countries. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 for his work in welfare economics. Sen was born in Santiniketan, West Bengal, India, to Ashutosh Sen and Amita Sen. Rabindranath Tagore gave Amartya Sen his name (Bengali অমর্ত্য ômorto, lit. "immortal"). Sen's family was from Wari and Manikganj, Dhaka, both in present-day Bangladesh. His father Ashutosh Sen was a professor of chemistry at Dhaka University who moved with his family to West Bengal in 1945 and worked at various government institutions. Sen's mother Amita Sen was the daughter 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 Visva-Bharati University for some years. Sen began his high-school education at St Gregory's School in Dhaka in 1940. From the autumn of 1941, Sen studied at Visva-Bharati University school. He later went to Presidency College, Kolkata, where earned a B.A. in Economics, with a minor in Mathematics. In 1953, he moved to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he earned a second B.A. degree in Economics in 1955. He was elected President of the Cambridge Majlis. While Sen was officially a Ph.D. student at Cambridge (though he had finished his research in 1955-6), he was offered the position of Professor and Head of the Economics Department of the newly created Jadavpur University in Calcutta. He served in that position, starting the new Economics Department, during 1956 to 1958. Sen had to choose a quite different subject for his Ph.D. thesis. He submitted his thesis on "The Choice of Techniques" in 1959, though the work had been completed much earlier, (except for some valuable advice from his adjunct supervisor in India, Professor A.K. Dasgupta, given to Sen while teaching and revising his work at Jadavpur) under the supervision of the "brilliant but vigorously intolerant" post-Keynesian, Joan Robinson. Between 1960 and 1961, Sen was a visiting Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was also a visiting Professor at UC-Berkeley and Cornell. 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 by 1969),. This is a period considered to be a Golden Period in the history of DSE. In 1972, he joined the London School of Economics as a Professor of Economics where he taught until 1977. From 1977 to 1986 he taught at the University of Oxford, where he was first a Professor of Economics and Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, and then the Drummond Professor of Political Economy and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford from 1980. In 1987, he joined Harvard as the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor of Economics. In 1998 he was appointed as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In January 2004, Sen returned to Harvard. He has served as president of the Econometric Society (1984), the International Economic Association (1986–1989), the Indian Economic Association (1989) and the American Economic Association (1994). He has also served as President of the Development Studies Association and the Human Development and Capabilities Association. In May 2007, he was appointed as chairman of Nalanda Mentor Group to examine the framework of international cooperation, and proposed structure of partnership, which would govern the establishment 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 5th century to 1197.
On 19 July 2012, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen was named the first chancellor of the proposed Nalanda University (NU). Teaching began there in August 2014.

Sen has received over 90 honorary degrees from universities around the world.
Books
  • Sen, Amartya (1960). Choice of techniques: an aspect of the theory of planned economic development. Oxford: Basil Blackford.
  • Sen, Amartya (1997). On economic inequality (expanded ed.). Oxford New York: Clarendon Press Oxford University Press.
  • Sen, Amartya (1982). Poverty and famines: an essay on entitlement and deprivation. Oxford New York: Clarendon Press Oxford University Press.
  • Sen, Amartya (1983). Choice, welfare, and measurement. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
  • Reprinted as: Sen, Amartya (1999). Choice, welfare, and measurement. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Reviewed in the Social Scientist: Sanyal, Amal (October 1983). ""Choice, welfare and measurement" by Amartya Sen". Social Scientist (Social Scientist - JSTOR) 11 (10): 49–56.
Sen, Amartya (1970). Collective choice and social welfare (1st ed.). San Francisco, California: Holden-Day.
  • Reprinted as: Sen, Amartya (1984). Collective choice and social welfare (2nd ed.). Amsterdam New York New York: North-Holland Sole distributors for the U.S.A. and Canada, Elsevier Science Publishing Co.
Sen, Amartya (1997). Resources, values, and development. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
  • Sen, Amartya (1985). Commodities and capabilities (1st ed.). Amsterdam New York New York, N.Y., U.S.A: North-Holland Sole distributors for the U.S.A. and Canada, Elsevier Science Publishing Co..
Reprinted as: Sen, Amartya (1999). Commodities and capabilities (2nd ed.). Delhi New York: Oxford University Press
Sen, Amartya (1987). On ethics and economics. Oxford, UK New York, NY, USA: Basil Blackwell.
  • Sen, Amartya; Drèze, Jean (1989). Hunger and public action. Oxford England New York: Clarendon Press Oxford University Press.
  • Sen, Amartya (1992). Inequality reexamined. New York Oxford New York: Russell Sage Foundation Clarendon Press Oxford University Press.
  • Also printed as: Sen, Amartya (November 2003). "Inequality reexamined". Oxford Scholarship Online (Oxford University Press).
Sen, Amartya; Nussbaum, Martha (1993). The quality of life. Oxford England New York: Clarendon Press Oxford University Press.
  • Sen, Amartya; Drèze, Jean (1998). India, economic development and social opportunity. Oxford England New York: Clarendon Press Oxford University Press.
  • Sen, Amartya; Suzumura, Kōtarō; Arrow, Kenneth J. (1996). Social choice re-examined: proceedings of the IEA conference held at Schloss Hernstein, Berndorf, near Vienna, Austria 2 (1st ed.). New York, N.Y: St. Martin's Press.
  • Sen, Amartya (1999). Development as freedom. New York: Oxford University Press. Sen, Amartya (2000). Freedom, rationality, and social choice: the Arrow lectures and other essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Sen, Amartya (2002). Rationality and freedom. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press.
  • Sen, Amartya; Suzumura, Kōtarō; Arrow, Kenneth J. (2002). Handbook of social choice and welfare. Amsterdam Boston: Elsevier.
  • Sen, Amartya (2005). The argumentative Indian: writings on Indian history, culture, and identity. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  • Sen, Amartya (2006). Identity and violence: the illusion of destiny. Issues of our time. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
  • Sen, Amartya (31 December 2007). Imperial illusions. Washington D.C.
  • Sen, Amartya (2010). The idea of justice. London: Penguin.
  • Sen, Amartya (2011). Peace and democratic society. Cambridge, England: Open Book Publishers.
  • Drèze, Jean (2013). An uncertain glory: the contradictions of modern India. London: Allen Lane.
Journal articles

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