Sen, an Indian national, went to Cambridge for further study after he completed his undergraduate degree in India in 1953. He received his doctoral degree in 1959.

Sen has taught at Delhi School of Economics, the London School of Economics and Oxford University. He was Professor of Economics and Philosophy in Harvard University between 1987 and 1998. In 1998, he left Harvard to become the dean of Trinity College, Cambridge. In 2003, he returned to teach at Harvard. Sen won the Nobel Economics Prize in 1998 for his outstanding contributions to welfare economics, and he is the architect of the human development paradigm.