When Sen’s second wife died of cancer in 1985, he left England for the United States and, after making a tour of several universities, decided to take a teaching post at Harvard.

HOME TO HARVARD

The University offered a rich intellectual milieu that sustained Sen’s growing interests.

“I could learn also from academics in many other fields as well, not least at the Society of Fellows where I served as a Senior Fellow for nearly a decade,” Sen has written in his Nobel autobiography.

But Sen has never restricted his attention to his fellow scholars. Former students, graduate and undergraduate alike, described him as a devoted teacher as well.

Although Sen has not yet taught in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences since returning this past semester, he boasts a strong—and generous—track record at the head of the classroom.

During his previous 11 years at the University he taught frequently and, by all accounts, enthusiastically in the Core.

Students describe Sen as a warm and caring professor.

Martha Nussbaum, a professor of law at the University of Chicago who has collaborated frequently with Sen in the past, has said that Sen enjoyed teaching a full load of courses at Harvard, even though his University professorship enabled him to pursue research without teaching at all.

He had “always been there to support students’ initiatives that broaden our intellectual experience,” she said.

Still, in spite of his lifelong academic career, Sen has remained strongly interested in the world outside the university gates. He travels frequently and says he cannot remember spending more than six months away from India since his student days.

According to McCarthy, it is this global sensibility that makes him a universally appealing candidate speaker for the Kennedy school.

“Everyone here seems quite pleased that he will be here addressing the government class,” he says.

—Staff writer Nathan J. Heller can be reached at heller@fas.harvard.edu.