Amartya Sen(1933 — ?)

When Amartya Sen was nine, he witnessed the terrible Bengal famine of 1943, which killed millions of people. Later, he realized that the granaries were not empty: the food existed, but the poorest people could no longer afford to buy it. This observation shaped his entire thinking as an economist.

At the age of 11, the young Amartya saw a Muslim laborer, Kader Mia, stagger into the family garden covered in blood after being stabbed during riots between Hindus and Muslims. The man had come looking for work in a dangerous neighborhood because his family was starving. Sen said this tragedy revealed to him, very early on, the link between poverty and the loss of freedom.

It was the poet Rabindranath Tagore, a friend of his family, who chose the name “Amartya” for the baby: the word means “immortal” in Sanskrit. Sen spent part of his childhood at Tagore's experimental school, Santiniketan, where lessons were held outdoors, without grades or strict exams.

As a student at Cambridge, Sen was diagnosed with oral cancer. He had to undergo very heavy radiotherapy, a treatment he chose himself after studying the survival statistics. He survived, but was left with lasting effects for the rest of his life — an experience that fueled his interest in health and people's real well-being.

When he received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998, Sen used part of the money to found an organization supporting literacy and health in India and Bangladesh, the Pratichi Trust. He maintained that educating girls was one of the most powerful levers against poverty.