Amartya Sen was born in India in 1933, when the country was still a British colony. Near the beginning of Development as Freedom, he recounts a childhood memory of a poor Muslim laborer who was stabbed and lay dying on the doorstep of his family home; the laborer’s extreme poverty forced him to find work in that neighborhood, despite knowing that it was prejudiced against Muslims like him. As a boy, Sen also witnessed the Bengal Famine of 1943, in which an estimated 2 to 3 million people died. However, democratic India’s later success in quelling famines and nurturing gradual economic growth gave him reason for hope, and it also got him thinking about the link between freedom and development. Sen went on to become a Nobel Prize-winning economist who has worked at prestigious institutions in India, the U.K., and the United States. His firsthand knowledge of the devastating effects poverty has always shaped his thought.

Sen was born into a prosperous, academic family that prioritized education. After completing his schooling and undergraduate degree in India, he went to the University of Cambridge to continue his education. A fellowship there allowed him to study philosophy in addition to his main degrees in economics.