Muhammad Yunus

b. 1940 · Bangladesh · Economics, Business, Peace

Nobel Peace Prize, 2006

Lent $27 of his own money and started a global industry for the poor.

Summary^1,3,4

An economics professor in Chittagong, Yunus lent small sums to 42 basket weavers in 1976 and found they repaid. Grameen Bank, founded on collateral-free group lending to overwhelmingly female borrowers, has since disbursed billions and made microcredit a worldwide instrument of development.

Achievements^1,3,5

Founded Grameen Bank, serving over 9 million borrowers, 97% of them women
Won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Grameen Bank
Developed the 'social business' model — enterprises optimising for impact rather than profit
Served as Chief Adviser of Bangladesh's interim government from 2024

Principal works^2,4

Banker to the PoorCreating a World Without PovertyA World of Three Zeros

How the work shapes the world today^2,5

Microfinance now reaches an estimated 140 million borrowers worldwide and is embedded in development policy at the World Bank and UN. His model shaped the fintech lending and mobile-money boom across Africa and South Asia, and 'social business' underpins the B-Corp and impact-investing movements. It also triggered a serious critical literature on debt burdens and over-lending — a live policy argument he remains at the centre of.

Posterity and the family line^2,5

Yunus has two daughters from two marriages, both pursuing careers far from banking.

2 people · 1 generations · 0 links with primary documentation

Monica Yunus
Daughter
American operatic soprano who has performed at the Metropolitan Opera and co-founded Sing for Hope, which places pianos in public spaces.
Attested
Deena Yunus
Daughter
Lives in Bangladesh; the family remains connected to the Grameen network of social enterprises.
Attested

Every link carries its own evidence. Documented means a register, will, archive or prize record names the relationship; attested rests on scholarly reference; contested is disputed between sources; and where the record runs out it is marked rather than filled in.

Talks and interviews

Continuity of ideas

Who shaped Muhammad Yunus, and who they shaped

Inherited from1

Amartya Sen
1933 · Economics, Philosophy
Sen's freedom-as-development argument is the theory microcredit put into practice.

Passed the work to

No downstream links recorded yet.

Sources and references

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