Amartya Sen, professor of economics at Harvard University and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics, a scholar who has been called "the conscience of his profession" for work on famine, poverty and social change, will speak at the University of California, San Diego on Oct. 5 at 5:30 p.m. The lecture, sponsored by the UCSD Center for the Humanities, is free and open to the public.

In his 1981 book, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation," Sen argued that famine occurs not from a lack of food, but from inequalities built into its distribution. As a 9-year-old boy Sen had witnessed the Bengal famine of 1943 in which three million people died. The 1981 book cited many cases of famine where food supplies were not significantly reduced but such factors as declining wages, unemployment, rising food prices, and poor food-distribution systems led to starvation among certain groups in society.

Sen has also published seminal works on gender inequality, ways of measuring poverty and inequality and how economic policies affect the well being of a community, or of a nation, as a whole. As a leader in "developmental economics" and by focusing on questions of "values" Sen has stood apart from many of the economists of the late 20 th and early 21 st century, where the mainstream of the profession has emphasized "self-interest" as the primary human motivator.

Among Sen's other recent books are: Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (Issues of Our Time) , Rationality and Freedom, Inequality Reexamined, and Development As Freedom. The Oct. 5 address will be on the topic "Illusion of Identity." presented at the Institute of the Americas, Hojel Auditorium, on the UCSD campus, from 5:30 to 7 p.m., followed by a reception. For more information visit http://humctr.ucsd.edu.