I was still a student when I first read some of Amartya Sen’s work. I had come across by chance his little book On Economic Inequality, which I read at once from start to finish. It was for me what we call in French a coup de foudre — love at first sight, or at least at first reading. Never before had I encountered such a combination of a comprehensive and lucid survey of the literature; a sober and effective use of formal tools; a delightfully clear presentation of mathematical results; an unflinching critical attention to the presuppositions of what was being claimed; and a pervasive concern with the victims of the economic inequalities which the book sought to conceptualize.

Since reading Amartya Sen’s little book, I have had some time to read widely. And for each of the features I just mentioned, I have probably come across some other writing by some other author that matched or came close to matching On Economic Inequality. But with one major exception, I have never since encountered anything like the same combination of features I had found so extraordinary in that book. I have to say “with one major exception”, because I was unable to resist the temptation to read much more of Professor Sen’s work, and thus underwent again and again the same gratifying experience I had gone through the first time I read him.