In the autobiography that accompanies his 1998 Nobel Prize lecture, Amartya K. Sen recounts the story of how a fellow passenger on a plane once him told of an "apparently interesting" course being taught at Harvard by "Kenneth Arrow, John Rawls and some unknown guy."

The year was 1969. Kenneth Arrow was the proponent of a radical new theory of social choice, about to win a Nobel Prize in economics; John Rawls, Conant University professor emeritus, was an established philosophy professor about to publish his monumental work A Theory of Justice and the third professor--Amartya Kumar Sen--was, well, "some unknown."

Not anymore.

Today, he speaks at Harvard's 349th Commencement ceremonies.

"Amartya Sen is a superb choice as Commencement speaker," wrote Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel in an e-mail message. "Rare among economists, Professor Sen keeps moral considerations at the center of his work. Rare among scholars, he brings his academic insights to bear on real world issues of poverty and human development."

From the small Bengal village where he was born and raised to the larger academic communities of Trinity College and Harvard, Sen has maintained his ties to India while becoming one of the world's top economists.

But Sen, as opposed to last year's Commencement speaker, Alan Greenspan, practices an economics based less on abstract theory than on empirical studies of underdeveloped--and understudied--countries.

"[Sen's] life and work are a model that Harvard students should have before them as they go out into the world," Sandel concluded.

From India to the 'Other' Cambridge

Sen was born in Santiniketan, India, in 1933. His mother, Amita Sen, was a top student with Rabindranath Tagore, the great educator and cultural leader. His father, Ashutosh Sen, taught chemistry at Dahak University, in what is now the capital of Bangladesh.

Through his mother--who has come from India to Harvard at the age of 87 to hear Sen speak--and also through his own studies, Sen became acquainted to the interconnected cultural and academic mission in Santiniketan.

"I remember being quite struck by Rabindranath Tagore's approach to cultural diversity," Sen has written.

"I think what marks him as a man as opposed to a scholar is that he grew up... surrounded, on the immediate stage, by Bengali poets, Sanskrit scholars and classical Indian dancers and, on the wider stage, by poverty and famine," wrote Martha Chen, a lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government and a close personal friend of Sen.

Sen has described not only seeing the impact of poverty in what was becoming India and Bangladesh in the 1940s and 1950s but also "the divisiveness...of communitarian politics."

After receiving a bachelors degree in economics at Calcutta University, Sen studied at Trinity College at Cambridge--where he now serves as a Master, a role which gives him both academic and student life responsibilities.

Before making this "homecoming," as he calls it, in 1998, Sen studied and taught for an extended period at Delhi University, the London School of Economics, Oxford University and at Harvard, where he accepted a joint appointment in economics and philosophy in 1987 and became Lamont University Professor in 1988.

Sen still teaches a mini-course in economics each year during the break in Cambridge's schedule.

Uniting Ethics and Economics

Sen's work has primarily been in the application of social choice theory to economics and in considering how political inequality may affect economics, especially in extreme conditions of poverty and famine.

In the commendation for his Nobel prize, which Sen received in 1998, the committee wrote Sen "has improved the theoretical foundation for comparing different distributions of society's welfare and defined new, and more satisfactory, indexes of poverty."

And the Nobel Prize committee is not alone in its praise.

"Amartya Sen is one the most creative and inspiring minds in economics today," says Maier Professor Benjamin M. Friedman '66.

"He is interested in extremely important, real-world problems," Friedman says. "All this has made a great deal of difference for economics, and it has opened the way for an enormous number of followers to implement... some of the new conceptual frameworks that Sen has developed."

One of Sen's most influential findings is that famines seem not to occur in democracies--freedom of the press puts too much pressure on the government to act before death tolls rise. Sen has also examined how democracy can best address gender imbalances among the impoverished.

"He has the rare capacity to think analytically like an economist but go beyond economists' frequent assumptions--for example, that people act primarily from self-interested motives," says Adams Professor Jane J. Mansbridge, at the Kennedy School.

"As a woman, I thank Sen for drawing economists' and planners' attention to female infanticide and, more broadly, to the ethical consequences of gender inequality," she says.

More than any specific discovery, however, Sen is known for how he approaches economics. "He's known for presenting economics with a human face and for being interested in things that a lot of economists do not stress," says Furer Professor Oliver D. Hart, the incoming chair of the economics department.

"Sen has people at the center of his economics," says Williams Professor Roderick L. MacFarquhar, chair of the government department. "Certainly he is a towering figure."

James E. Foster, a professor of economics at Vanderbilt University who sees Sen as his mentor and has recently collaborated with him on an appendix to Sen's 1973 work On Economic Inequality, says he and Sen "often argued into the wee hours about points in the book." Foster says, "He is very enthusiastic about his work. I wondered how we could do it."

The Dabbler

Sen sees himself, however, as much more of a dabbler and says he feels intellectually bored if he is indefinitely confined to one topic.

"I feel somewhat apologetic that my interests are so diverse," Sen says. "I'm so peripatetic, after a year or two I tend to move to something else."

Sen says Harvard has been especially good at "indulging" him and "allowing [him] to move from one subject to another."

Sen says he was particularly happy to receive the Lamont University professorship, not only because its prestige and the academic freedom it allows, but also because of former President Derek C. Bok's description of the professorship.

When it was established, the description included economics, Sen says, "but it was much more concerned with the underside of economics--poverty and inequality--and also very deeply concerned with human behavior and rationality."

It was a pleasant surprise: "I was particularly pleased because it fit so uncannily well with my interests," Sen continues.

"My relationship to Harvard is a very intimate one," Sen says, and he says that though he resides much of the year at Trinity College in the "other" Cambridge, the ties with Harvard "give me an opportunity to return to my home, here in Cambridge," and to teach at Harvard.

Dedication to Students

Many of Sen's colleagues cite his commitment to undergraduate education, despite the opportunities he has had to do research and study without having a teaching load.

"He's an incredibly dedicated teacher," wrote Martha Nussbaum, a law professor at the University of Chicago and a frequent collaborator with Sen, in an e-mail message.

"While he held the University Professorship at Harvard, which doesn't require any teaching at all, he always taught a full load and loved teaching in the Core," she wrote. "He thinks teaching undergraduates is very important," she added.

Foster recounts how he first met Sen--in a letter. "I sent him a copy of an undergraduate senior paper. He was at the London School of Economics, and I was at a small college in Florida," Foster says. "He read the paper and sent back comments, and he suggested I submit it to an economics journal. He encouraged me."

Sen agrees undergraduates have always been an important part of his life and says students have furthered his work. "I don't think I ever published a book that was not vetted by the students, in the sense that I presented it in one form or another in classes," he says.

And his students say Sen is an open and accessible professor.

"I've found him surprisingly approachable," wrote Estelle Cantillon in an e-mail message. Cantillon served as teaching fellow for Sen's mini-course this year. She wrote that Sen was very receptive to her ideas to re-shape the graduate course and that he "always been there to support students initiatives that broaden our intellectual experience."

As Master of Trinity College, Sen has continued to show a dedication to undergraduates.

Andreas K. Demetriades, the president of the BA Society at Trinity, the student union, praised Sen in an e-mail message.

"Professor Sen is a unique figure in Trinity College.... His vibrant and highly active silhouette can be seen crossing Great Court at any given time of the day and night," he wrote.

Demetriades wrote Sen often leaves the Master's High Table to converse with undergraduates, and Sen arranges for every student in the College to eat with him in the Master's residence at least once a year.

Demetriades particularly praised Sen's openness to change in the College.

"You would never hear him reject a proposal because 'things weren't like that in my time,'" he wrote.

Balancing students with administrative duties, Sen has made the Master position his own.

"He holds an office previously held by people like Isaac Newton," Demetraides wrote, "but to us here in Trinity now he is setting a mark very much distinctly his own."

Beyond Economics

When asked about what he does outside of economics, Sen has an energetic response: "You know, in the Who's Who they always ask, 'What is your hobby?'" Sen quips. "And I don't know what hobby I have. I'm not even sure I have a hobby.

"I sometimes felt that Who's Who is so insistent in asking what your hobby is, I should take up collecting postage stamps or some respectively identifiable hobby, but I haven't," Sen says. "I haven't been able to indulge in such extremism."

Sen does admit to enjoy chatting, looking at works of art and going on long walks--"I like doing what most people like doing," he says. Friends generally agree with Sen's assessment, though Martha Chen adds that Sen is "a connoisseur of fine wine" and likes to jog.

His colleagues do emphasize, however, the deep way in which he cares for others. "He is warm to people who are not high and mighty," James Foster says. "That is something I love about him."

Nussbaum says if Sen has a "hobby," it is his family. Besides his octogenarian mother--whom Nussbaum calls "a major influence on his thinking"--Sen has four children.

Sen is married to his third wife, Emma Rothschild, a professor of history and economics at King's College at Cambridge.

Ties to India

Despite having an international reputation and living most of the year in either Britain or the United States, Sen has maintained only Indian citizenship and continues to be involved with political and economic reform in his homeland.

"I feel quite strongly Indian as a citizen," Sen says. "India is a poor country, a less privileged country than Britain or America, and so it gives me even more of a reason for identifying myself with India."

Though Sen has not advised any government, he has written numerous articles and returns to India to vote. "I like to participate in the public debate," Sen says. "For that, being an Indian citizen is very important."

Sen wrote in his Nobel autobiography that setting up the trusts in India and Bangladesh "gave me an opportunity to do something immediate and practical" in his country, and he says it reminds him of his days spent as a student, running evening schools and teaching literacy.

Foster says Sen is too modest in describing the stature he has in India.

"When he goes back," Foster says, "people hang around his house. They stand around and they come by to see the great Amartya Sen."

Commencement Day

Considering today's speech, it is only natural to think of how Sen compares to another economist: Alan Greenspan, the chair of the Federal Reserve Board, who spoke last year.

The comparison may not be so telling. "For Greenspan, it is about the U.S. and the West, whereas Sen's canvas is likely to be a broader canvas," Hart says.

"It's not that they are in conflict, it's just what they concentrate on is different. Greenspan's job involves monetary policy, interest rates and he doesn't think about some poor women in India, necessarily, on a daily basis," he says. "I think Sen spends a lot of this time worrying about that sort of thing."

Looking at Sen's work, Friedman conjectured in an e-mail message that Sen's speech would focus more on philosophical than economic, challenges.

"The main point for students, I think, is that it is possible to grapple with the big problems and that being intellectually creative can enormously expand one's ability."

Foster says, "[Sen] is socially responsible in the extreme. He brings together philosophy, economics, everything."

Speaking of a recent dinner together, Foster says Sen started the conversation with a discussion of the death penalty, since Tennessee, where Foster lives, had just executed a death row inmate.

"The last time I had dinner with him at the Harvard Faculty Club, he sat across the table from me, but almost as soon as he sat down, he said, 'You must be proud of your state. They have just electrocuted a prisoner. That's really quite an embarrassment,'" Foster says. "It was quite a shock to me, but what he was saying is that... even a prisoner has rights."

"I've thought quite a lot about it since then. This prodding of my conscience," he says. "That is what he's done for the economics profession--

prodded its conscience."