Home in the World; A Memoir Amartya Sen Allen Lane An imprint of Penguin Books Amartya Sen takes us on journeys all the way to an intellectually endowed horizon. For people who belong to his generation as also the one which followed his, Home in the World is a recapitulation of the ideas which. Read more »
At 23, Amartya Sen finished the work for his PhD in one year and then set up an economics department
An excerpt from the Nobel Laureate’s memoir, ‘Home in the World’. Amartya Sen receiving the Nobel Prize from Swedish King Carl Gustaf in 1998. | Peter Mueller / Reuters
By June 1956, at the end of my first year as a research student, I had a set of chapters that looked as if they could form a dissertation. A substantial number of economists at various universities were work ing then on different ways of choosing between techniques of production. Some were particularly focused on maximising the total value of the output produced, whereas others wanted to maximise the surplus that was generated, and there were also some profit maximisers.
From Influences to Friendships and Intellectual Concerns, Amartya Sen s Memoir Is Rich in Detail
In the Home in the World , the clarity of Senâs thought and the lucidity of his prose are delightful and entertaining.
Amartya Sen. Photo: FPA S.r.l/Flickr CC BY NC 2.0
It is entirely apposite that the title of Amartya Senâs memoir
Home in the World echoes the title of one of Rabindranath Tagoreâs more famous novels,
The Home and the World (
Ghare Baire). Not only was the name Amartya given by Rabindranath, but Senâs life was closely associated with Santiniketan from his earliest days. Sen was born in Santiniketan, in his motherâs parental home, but much of his childhood was spent in Dhaka and in Mandalay (where his father was a professor of chemistry). His earliest memories go back to his journey to what was then called Burma and his days there. He visited Santiniketan when he was a child but began to go to school there when he was about eight years old.