Swapna Mukhopadhyay PhD '73
Professor Swapna Mukhopadhyay is the first female South Asian graduate alumna of MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Science. Born in Kolkata, India, she completed her PhD in Economics in 1973. While she was at MIT, she found that the classical economics she was studying, with all of its assumptions, was not applicable to the world that she had come from. After graduating, she returned to India and engaged in field studies to more directly apply what she had learned.
Mukhopadhyay was a Professor at the Institute of Economic Growth in New Delhi from 1973 to 1994 and served as Director of the Institute of Social Studies Trust in India from 1994 to 2004. Mukhopadhyay was also very active within India’s NGO scene, eventually becoming the Founder-Director of the Arpan Mukhopadhyay Memorial Trust, where she dedicated herself to educational reform and ran a school for disadvantaged children in the outskirts of Delhi.
Swapna Mukhopadhyay PhD Thesis: Studies in Production Functions
Swapna Mukhopadhyay Thesis Acknowledgements
Swapna Mukhopadhyay (third from right) with other South Asian students from MIT and the Boston-area in 1968. Courtesy Aman Ahluwalia