Professor Sukumar Sen was born in 1900 in Gotan, near Shyamsundar in the Purba Bardhaman district. He obtained an F.A. in 1919 from Burdwan Raj College, then affiliated with the University of Calcutta. He received a divisional scholarship and earned first class honours in Sanskrit from the Government Sanskrit College in 1921. He studied Comparative Linguistics in Kolkata, scoring the highest marks in 1923. He received a Premchand Roychand Scholarship and a PhD degree. He joined the University of Calcutta as a lecturer in 1930, where he served as a professor for thirty four years. He became the second Khaira Professor in the Department of Comparative Philology. His interests were in Bengali linguistics but he was also well versed in Pāli, Prakrit and Sanskrit. He died in 1992.