Abhijit Banerjee Jointly Wins Nobel Prize 2019 in Economic Sciences; Here's All About The Indian-American Who is a JNU Alumnus

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics has been awarded on Monday to three economists. In a proud moment for India, among the award winners is Indian-American economist - Abhijit Banerjee. The other two economists who are honoured with Nobel Prize are Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer. All three economists have been awarded for their experimental approach to “alleviating global poverty.”

The prize is officially known as the "Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences." The findings of the three economists have improved the ability to fight poverty. According to reports, as a result of their findings, more than five million Indian children have been benefitted from programmes of remedial tutoring in schools. Abiy Ahmed Wins Nobel Peace Prize 2019, Twitterati Congratulate Prime Minister of Ethiopia For The Honour.

Announcement by Nobel Prize committee:

Profile of Abhijit Banerjee:

Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee was born in 1961 in Mumbai to Nirmala Banerjee and Dipak Banerjee. His mother was a professor of Economics at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Kolkata, and his father was a professor and the head of the Department of Economics at Presidency College. Abhijit attended South Point School and Presidency College in Kolkata, where he completed his B.S. degree in economics in 1981. The Nobel Prize Laureate completed his M.A. in economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi in the year 1983.

Abhijit pursued a PhD in Economics from Harvard in 1988. His thesis subject was “Essays in Information Economics”. At present, Abhijit is the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to this, the laureate had taught at Harvard University and Princeton University. In 2012, he won Gerald Loeb Award along with co-author Esther Duflo for their book Poor Economics.

Abhijit was married to Arundhati Tuli Banerjee, but later they divorced. They had a son which died in 2016. Abhijit has a child with co-researcher Duflo who also won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2019. Their child was born in 2012. Both married each other in 2015.

Alfred Nobel — a Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite —founded the Nobel Prize. Nobel Prize for physics, chemistry, medicine and literature prizes are awarded in Stockholm, while the peace prizes are given in Oslo.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 14, 2019 04:06 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).