Economist Amartya Sen is alive and well, his family asserted after fake news started circulating on social media that the Nobel Prize winner had passed away on Tuesday.
"It is fake news," said Nandana Dev Sen, "I have just spent a week with him in our family home in Cambridge."
"He is absolutely fine, teaching two courses a week, as healthy as always," she added.
She also posted the denial on X.com.
The fake news about the death of the philosopher-economist, who will turn 90 this November, began spreading after it was posted on an account purporting to belong to Claudia Goldin, another Nobel Prize winner in economics.
Several prominent people offered their condolences and re-tweeted the fake news, giving it currency.
ALSO READ | Homes of Amartya Sen and November thoughts
Sen won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 for his groundbreaking research on welfare economics and social choice theory.
Some of his most notable contributions included developing new methods to measure poverty, inequality, and human development.
His Capability Approach linked economics to moral philosophy by proposing that social policies should aim to expand people's capabilities and freedom.
Beyond his academic work, Sen is an outspoken advocate for human rights and democracy, never shying away from using his knowledge of economics to highlight issues such as racial and gender inequality, famine, poverty, and political liberty.
Sen has authored over 30 books, including "Collective Choice and Social Welfare" (1970), "Poverty and Famines" (1981), "Inequality Reexamined" (1992), "Development as Freedom" (1999), and "The Idea of Justice" (2009). He was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honor, in 1999.
Sen has also been an outspoken critic of the current ruling dispensation at the Centre, and has called it "one of the most appalling in the world".
(With inputs from PTI)