Muhammad Yunus is Founder of the Grameen Bank which successfully developed micro-credit in rural Bangladesh.

Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2006 for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.

In 1965, Muhammad Yunus was awarded the Fullbright Fellowship and completed a PhD at Vanderbilt University, USA. He returned to Bangladesh and became head of the Economics Department at Chittagong University in 1972.

The famine that devastated Bangladesh in 1974 changed his life forever. He began to examine the inadequacies of economic theory and determined that the problem was based on structure - a lack of credit to the poor. The idea of micro-credit was developed, and flourished.

Today the bank claims to have 6.6 million borrowers, 97 percent of whom are women, and provides services in more than 70,000 villages in Bangladesh. Its model of micro-financing has inspired similar efforts around the world.

Muhammad Yunus has also received the Volvo Environment Prize, World Food Prize, and Care Humanitarian Award. He was named by BusinessWeek one of the “30 greatest entrepreneurs of all time” in 2007, and is author of The poor people's banker about the Grameen Bank project.

Muhammad Yunus lives in Dhaka and has built the Grameen Bank into the largest rural bank in Bangladesh.

[last updated 13-Aug-07]