The 2015 Nobel Prize in Economics has been awarded to the Cambridge-educated scholar Angus Deaton for his noteworthy “analysis of consumption, poverty and welfare”.

Born in Edinburgh, Deaton went on to study at Fitzwilliam College in the 1970s, gaining a BA, an MA and a PhD from the university. He has attributed some of his inspiration to those years, claiming that Richard Stone, the Cambridge professor who won the same Nobel Prize in 1984, acted as a mentor to him.

“I’ve always wanted to be like him”, he said. “I think putting numbers together into a coherent framework always seemed to me to be what really matters.”

He has taught at the University of Bristol, and is now the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at the prestigious Princeton University.

He also holds an Honorary Fellowship at Fitzwilliam College.

The 69 year-old’s career has been dedicated to researching international developments in health and inequality.

Perhaps best known for the ‘Deaton Paradox’ – which describes the way in which sharp shocks to income do not cause proportional shocks to consumption – he has also authored four books and numerous articles exploring the links between individual and household behaviour and wellbeing.

As the Nobel committee explained: “the consumption of goods and services is a fundamental part of people’s welfare. The Laureate, Angus Deaton, has deepened our understanding of different aspects of consumption… By emphasising the links between individual consumption and outcomes for the whole economy, his work has helped transform modern microeconomics, macroeconomics and development economics.”

The practical implications of such work, as the committee described, are especially evident in public policy, where it has helped governments to establish how reactions to tax changes vary across different social groups.

His peers and colleagues have spoken out in praise of both the man and his work. The President of Princeton University, Christopher L. Eisgruber, described Deaton as “a brilliant economist whose pioneering research attacks big questions with rigor, imagination and daring.” The dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs has said that “Angus is a tremendous teacher, mentor and colleague,” and one of Deaton’s former students, now chairwoman of the economics department at Princeton, has described him as “enormously funny and witty and well read, frighteningly erudite and very good company.”

Modest in his acceptance of the prize, Deaton claimed that “if you’re my age and you’ve been working for a long time you know this is a possibility. But you also know there are a huge number of people out there who deserve this. That lightning would strike me seemed like a very small probability event.” His name has in fact been suggested for many years as a worthy candidate, and despite his lack of particular namesake theory, he has finally been rewarded for his career-defining research into economic development. The prize itself is worth around £637,000, and was created in 1969 by the Swedish Central Bank in memory of Alfred Nobel, who founded the five other prizes in 1895.