‘News’ of Amartya Sen’s passing false, confirms Nobel Laureate’s family

A claim that Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has passed away went viral on social media on October 10. On X (formerly Twitter), a handle named after the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics 2023, Claudia Goldin, shared the news first. “A terrible news. My dearest Professor Amartya Sen has died minutes ago. No words”, read the tweet. (Archive)

A terrible news. My dearest Professor Amartya Sen has died minutes ago. No words. pic.twitter.com/giIdK0t2XA

— Claudia Goldin (@profCGoldin) October 10, 2023

Thereafter, several news media outlets including Press Trust of India, Times of India, Deccan Herald, Zee News, Free Press Journal, Deccan Chronicle, Firstpost, Moneycontrol Hindi and ETV Bharat, published the news.

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Fact Check

Alt News found that these claims on social media were baseless. We reached out to Dr Sen’s daughter, Antara Dev Sen, who informed us that he’s doing fine.

Furthermore, Dr Sen’s other daughter, Nandana Sen, took to Twitter to refute the viral claims. “Friends, thanks for your concern but it’s fake news: Baba is totally fine…”, she wrote.

Friends, thanks for your concern but it’s fake news: Baba is totally fine. We just spent a wonderful week together w/ family in Cambridge—his hug as strong as always last night when we said bye! He is teaching 2 courses a week at Harvard, working on his gender book—busy as ever! pic.twitter.com/Fd84KVj1AT

— Nandana Sen (@nandanadevsen) October 10, 2023

The Twitter account @profCGoldin that first tweeted this news does not belong to Dr Claudia Goldin. We found that Dr Goldin has another Twitter account with the username @PikaGoldin that has been tagged by the official handles of The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and The Nobel Prize.

Therefore, the viral claim on social media stating that Amartya Sen has passed away is false.