Kolkata: In a rare honour, the Presidency University decided Thursday to emboss facsimiles of the faces of Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee and Amartya Sen – the two Nobel laureates in its list of distinguished alumni – on its wall.
Vice-Chancellor Anuradha Lohia said the university has also decided to immediately send a felicitation scroll to Abhijit Banerjee’s residence for winning the Nobel Prize for Economics this year.
Amartya Sen, currently the Thomas W Lamont University Professor at Harvard, won the coveted award in 1998.
“We are proud to have two Nobel laureates as our alumni. We will emboss the facsimile of their faces to be displayed prominently at a suitable place with the design matching the wall of fame we had set up during the 200 year celebrations of the institution,” Anuradha Lohia told media persons here.
Abhijit Banerjee’s name would also be included in the wall of fame that now bears the names of 100 famous former students of the 202-year old institution established in 1817 as Hindu College.
It was christened Presidency College in 1855, and upgraded to a university in 2010.
Abhijit Banerjee completed his graduation with Economics honours from Presidency College in 1981, securing a first class first rank in Calcutta University.
Lohia said a proposal will be sent to the university’s governing board for conferring honorary D.Litt on all three Nobel winners in Economics this year – Banerjee, his wife Esther Duflo and economist Michael Kremer – in the next convocation.
PTI
