Yunus, Muhammad

Yunus, Muhammad, 1940–, Bangladeshi economist and banker, b. Chittagong (then in British India), grad. Vanderbilt Univ., Nashville, Tenn. (Ph.D. 1971). Yunus, who was teaching economics in the United States after receiving his doctorate, returned to his homeland when it won its independence from Pakistan in 1972, and became an economics professor at Chittagong Univ. In 1976 he began offering small loans, using his own money, to poor village women who could not qualify for conventional bank loans, creating what has become known as microcredit or microfinance. His efforts, which expanded in the late 1970s and early 1980s, led to the establishment of the Grameen Bank [Bengali,=rural or village] in 1983. Bankrolled in part by loans and grants in the 1980s and 90s, the Grameen Bank has since become self-supporting. The concept of microfinance has spread to many developing countries, allowing some of the world's most improverished people the means to improve their lives through their own initiative; the borrowers continue to be largely women. Yunus and the Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for their work to create economic and social development from below.