SCOTTISH Borders Council has offered its congratulations to Professor Angus Deaton, the recently-named winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for Economics.

It was, said SBC convener Graham Garvie ahead of last week’s full council meeting, a “remarkable achievement” for the 70-year-old who came to the Borders as a child in 1955 when his parents – Leslie and Lily (nee Wood) – moved to the village of Bowden.

Councillor Garvie noted that Leslie had been a chief roads officer with the former Borders Regional Council and that his son received his primary education at Melrose and was at Hawick High School for two years before going to Fettes College in Edinburgh.

A graduate of Cambridge University, Professor Deaton is now professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University in New Jersey and holds both US and British Citizenship.

In awarding him his prize – worth £640,000 – the Royal Swedish Academy acknowledged that he had made “clear and lasting impressions in practical economic policy and in modern economic research – of immense importance for human welfare, not least in poor countries”.