Amartya Kumar Sen, 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. 

Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University and was until 2004 the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.  He is also Senior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.

Earlier on he was Professor of Economics at Jadavpur University Calcutta, the Delhi School of Economics, and the London School of Economics, and Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford University.

Amartya Sen has served 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 research has ranged over social choice theory, economic theory, ethics and political philosophy, welfare economics, theory of measurement, decision theory, development economics, public health, and gender studies.

Amartya Sen’s books have been translated into more than thirty languages, and include Choice of Techniques (1960), Growth Economics (1970), Collective Choice and Social Welfare (1970), On Economic Inequality (1973, 1997); The Idea of Justice (2009), and The Country of First Boys (2015).  

Amartya Sen’s awards include Bharat Ratna (India); Commandeur de la Legion d'Honneur (France); the National Humanities Medal (USA); Ordem do Merito Cientifico (Brazil); Honorary Companion of Honour (UK); the Aztec Eagle (Mexico); the Edinburgh Medal (UK); the George Marshall Award (USA); the Eisenhower Medal (USA); and the Nobel Prize in Economics.

He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1998 for research on fundamental problems in welfare economics. Studies of social choice, welfare measurement, and poverty.

Which are the most important and fundamental resources in a community and how should we divide them? One focus of Amartya Sen's research is how individuals' values can be considered in collective decision-making and how welfare and poverty can be measured.

His efforts stem from his interest in questions of distribution and, in particular, the lot of society's poorest members. Amartya Sen's studies have included famines, to create a deeper understanding of the economic reasons behind famine and poverty.

According to scholar.harvard.edu