Business

Muhammad Yunus

Lent $27 of his own money to 42 villagers; the experiment became Grameen Bank and a Nobel Peace Prize.

Born: 1940 · Chittagong, Bengal (now Bangladesh)
Roots: Bengali Muslim
Family: Middle class; His father was a jeweler; one of nine surviving children.
Education: Dhaka University → Vanderbilt University (PhD, economics, on a Fulbright)
Started with: $27; His own money, lent to 42 craftspeople in Jobra village in 1976 — the experiment that became Grameen Bank.
Affiliations & societies: None documented.; Information only — claims like these are often unverifiable and may be wrong.

The pathway

1965 · age 25
Fulbright to the US
PhD in economics at Vanderbilt; campaigns from the US for Bangladesh's independence in 1971.
1974 · age 34
Famine in Bangladesh
Teaching economics in Chittagong while people starve outside; begins field visits to Jobra village.
1976 · age 36
The $27 loans$27
Lends his own money to 42 villagers trapped by moneylenders; banks refuse to lend to the poor without collateral.
1983 · age 43
Grameen Bank founded
Microcredit institution owned largely by its borrowers, most of them women.
2006 · age 66
Nobel Peace Prize
Shared with Grameen Bank.
2011 · age 70
Forced out of Grameen
Removed under the Hasina government amid a long political dispute.
2024 · age 84
Leads Bangladesh's interim government
Appointed Chief Adviser after the government falls to student protests.

Sources

Compiled from these references and contemporaneous press reporting. Figures are approximate; verify before relying on them.