Economist Amartya Sen awarded Bodley Medal

26 March 2019

The Bodleian Libraries has presented economist and philosopher Amartya Sen with the Bodley Medal, the Libraries' highest honour.

The honour was awarded during the Founder's Lunch on 15 March 2019, an annual event commemorating the birth of the Libraries’ founder, Sir Thomas Bodley, and his legacy of philanthropy. Lord Patten of Barnes, Chancellor of the University of Oxford and Bodley’s Librarian Richard Ovenden presented the award to Sen.

Sen is the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor at Harvard University, a member of faculty at Harvard Law School and in 1998 he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

The Bodley Medal is awarded by the Bodleian Libraries to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the worlds in which the Bodleian is active including literature, culture, science and communication. Past winners include biographer Claire Tomalin, novelist and screenwriter William Boyd, classicist Mary Beard, physicist Stephen Hawking, film director Nicholas Hytner, novelist Hilary Mantel, the late poet Seamus Heaney, writer and actor Alan Bennett and inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee.