Born on November 3rd 1933, at Shantiniketan, Amartya Sen was the son of Amita Sen and Ashutosh Sen. Named "Amartya" by Rabindranath Tagore, he received his initial education at Shantiniketan and then Presidency College, Calcutta. Childhood experiences about poverty and hunger, including a first-hand exposure to the Bengal famine of 1942, in which over three million people perished, and close comaraderie with classmate and noted economist, the late Sukhamoy Chakravarty, helped Sen taking the decision to become an economist. He joined the Trinity College, Cambridge in 1953. Between 1956-1998 he was Professor of Economics at various Universities in India and abroad.His other posts were: 1980-1988: Drummond Professor of Political Economy,Oxford. 1987-1998: Lamont Professor, Harvard University. Sen became an honorary fellow of Trinity in 1991and it's Master, an honour bestowed by the queen, this year(1998). On Oct. 14, 1998, Sen was awarded the world's most prestigious honour, when the Royal Sweedish Academy, named him it's solo choice for th 1998 Economics Nobel for his work on "The poorest people in Society".