Muhammad Yunus

He married Vera Forostenko, a student of Russian literature, in 1970. They had one daughter and divorced soon after her birth.

Currently, he is married to Afrozi Yunus, a physics professor. He has one daughter from his second marriage.

Muhammad Yunus was born in Chittagong as the third of 14 children. His father, Hazi Dula Mia Shoudagar was a successful goldsmith and his mother Sufia Khatun was a kind lady who always helped the poor. Five of his siblings died in infancy.

As a child he attended the village school, later shifting to Lamabazar Primary School, Chittagong. He passed his matriculation examination from Chittagong Collegiate School.

He attended Chittagong College where he actively participated in cultural activities. He later joined Dhaka University from where he completed his B.A and M.A.

After receiving a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the U.S, he enrolled in Vanderbilt University and obtained his PhD in economics in 1971.

While pursuing his PhD in the U.S, he worked as Assistant Professor of Economics at Middle Tennessee State University, Tennessee from 1969 to 1972. Upon his return to Bangladesh, he was appointed as the Deputy Chief of the General Economics Division in the Government’s Planning Commission in July 1972. However, he found the job boring and resigned within few months in September, the same year.

He joined the Chittagong University as Associate Professor of Economics, and later became Head of the Department of Economics. In 1975, he was made Director of the Rural Economics Programme, a role he held till 1989.

While working at the Chittagong University, he also started his work on establishing the Grameen Bank. In 1976, he personally started lending tiny amounts to the poor, and in 1983 what had begun as a pilot project started operating as a full-fledged bank, the Grameen bank with Yunus as the Managing Director.

He has also authored several books including ‘Banker to the Poor’ and ‘Creating a World without Poverty.’

The idea for Grameen Bank originated in Yunus’s mind while conducting a research programme in the 1970’s for designing a banking system that would help the poor in overcoming their poverty.

Initially he started by personally lending small amounts of money to the poor in Jobra village 1976. Then he sought support from the Central Bangladesh Bank to extend micro-credit facilities to other places as well. The project was immensely successful.

In 1983, the Grameen Bank was officially incorporated by a Bangladeshi government ordinance. The bank also received help in form of a grant from the Ford Foundation.

Yunus’s purpose of setting up the bank was to make available small loans to the poor at reasonable rates in order to encourage self-employment opportunities that would help the poor in utilizing their skills and making economic gains. It has been estimated that 97% of the borrowers from Grameen Bank are women.

Over the years, the Grameen Bank has grown to encompass over two dozen enterprises, all dedicated to the betterment of society. These include: Grameen Trust, Grameen Fund, Grameen Telecom, Grameen Shakti, etc.