1940



Muhammad Yunus is born to Hazi Muhammad Dula Mia, who is a gold-merchant, and Sufia Khatun, a housewife, in Bathua, Hathhazari, Chittagong. He becomes the third child in a family that would subsequently have 13 children altogether (four die in infancy). 1952
An active member of Boys' Scouts, Yunus is chosen to attend the first All-Pakistan Jamboree.

1955

Yunus is selected to participate in the World Jamboree in Canada. He travels a few countries in the west. During his visit, Yunus first learns many people there know little about developing countries.
Yunus completes his tenth grade and is placed 15th out of 39,000 students who sit the province-wide final examinations.

1957



At Dhaka University Yunus pursues B.A. (Honors) in Economics. During this time he takes the initiative to bring out a nationally circulated literary magazine called "Uttaran" and becomes its co-editor.

1961

After completing his MA in Economics, Yunus becomes a research assistant to Professor Nurul Islam and Rehman Sobhan in Bureau of Economics. Later he joins Chittagong College as Lecturer in Economics.

1969

A Fulbright Scholar, Yunus obtains his Ph.D. in Economics from Vanderbilt University. He is appointed to teach at the Economics Institute, University of Colorado. Later he teaches at Tennessee State University.

1971

The liberation war starts and Yunus along with five other Bangladeshis living in Nashville forms Bangladesh Citizen's Committee, which declares allegiance to Bangladesh, and immediately begins visiting local newspapers and radio stations to explain their stand. He helps lobby Congress and foreign embassies for diplomatic recognition of the new nation.

1972

Yunus returns to an independent Bangladesh and is disappointed to see that Dhaka University is not interested to appoint him to a teaching position. He works as Deputy Chief of the General Economics Division at the Planning Commission but resigns from the post within three months to work at Chittagong University as Associate Professor and Head of the department of Economics.

1973

Yunus starts Rural Economics Program at the university. He takes up a project named Tebhaga Khamar (three-share farm) whereby a committee is formed by the villagers to provide for all the costs of water, seed and insecticides and fertilizer

to farmers. At harvest time the farmer would divide his harvest into three equal parts: one would go to the landlord, one to the farmer and one to the committee. The committee would sell its share of rice, pay back the money borrowed for financing initial inputs and finance the next crop. Later Government borrows the idea and renames it The Package Input Program (PIP).

1976

Yunus visits Jobra, a village near Chittagong University, where he lends all he has on him, a meagre $27 (£14.50), to 42 women entrepreneurs who have hitherto been exploited by local moneylenders. He asks his university bank to sanction loans to some poor people, but the manager refuses, saying those people do not have collateral and would not use the money wisely. The manager, however, adds that he will grant loans provided a rich person underwrites each loan. Yunus tells the manager that he is ready to sign his name on any documents for loans but he will not pay in the event ofanyone defaulting, even if it means taking him to the court. The manager says the bank will never sue a university professor and department head because of negative publicity, and gives the requested money to Yunus.

Drawing on his Tebhaga Khamar experience, Yunus begins to implement his plan; he selects borrowers from the lowest income group, a large number of them women, and puts them in groups to encourage peer monitoring. The idea eventually becomes Grameen Bank Prakalpa (Village Bank Project).

1981

Grameen Bank Prakalpa continues to expand beyond Chittagong. Critics point out that Grameen Bank Prakalpa has too high an overhead cost to make it feasible, but the project has already attracted international attention. The International Fund for Agricultural Development lends it $3.4 million.

1983



Grameen Bank is established. By the end of the year, the Bank has 86 branches covering 1249 villages and 58320members. The following year, Yunus receives Ramon Magsaysa Award and for the first time the bank makes a profit (US$ 0.0068 million) and whomen borrowers outnumber male borrowers.

1989

Yunus establishes Grameen Trust to support and promote poverty-focused micro-credit programs in other countries. By the end of October 2006 the Trust will have provided support to 138 replication partners in 37 countries.

1991

The number of Grameen Bank members crosses 100,000, 92% of whom are female. The bank now boasts 1000 branches.

1994

Yunus wins the World Food Prize and Grameen's total cumulative loan disbursement crosses $1 billion.

1996


GrameenPhone, the first GSM mobile company in Bangladesh, is established. Yunus' not-for-profit organization, Grameen Telecom, a part of GrameenPhone, provides village phones. Women entrepreneurs use micro-credit to buy mobile phones and generate income by charging villagers fees for using their phones. In the next ten years, GrameenPhone would bag 10 million subscribers, to become the largest telecommunication service provider in Bangladesh.

1997

The first Micro-Credit Summit is held in Washington DC, with more than 2900 people representing 137 countries with a nine-year campaign to reach 100 million of the world's poorest families with credit for self-employment and other financial services. Grameen Shikkha is also founded to promote mass education and training. For every $1000 contribution a perpetual scholarship is created.

1999

Yunus launches Grameen Software that makes cost-effective, quality software. Later, Grameen Software becomes the first ISO 9001-2000 Quality System certified IT company in Bangladesh.

2001


Grameen Shakti, a sister concern of Grameen Bank, installs 5523 Solar Home systems. Since the systems are expensive, Grameen Shakti introduces a soft financing option for rural customers. The solar power is used to run business establishments -rice mills, saw mills, poultry farms, to name a few-located in remote areas.

2002

Speaking at the university of California, Berkeley, former President Clinton describes Dr. Yunus as, "a man who long ago should have won the Nobel Prize [and] I'll keep saying that until they finally give it to him."

2003

In his Commonwealth Lecture Yunus warns that development goals should not be set without proper backing. "My worry is that these courageous millennium goals may degenerate into a cut-and-paste job of the earlier edition, merely replacing the 'year 2000' by the 'year 2015', with appropriate changes in the text." He says that the biggest challenge for proliferating micro-credit programs is the lack of availability of donor money to help those programs get to their break-even point. Given adequate support, Yunus says, poverty can be halved by 2015 and "we can get ready to put poverty in the museum, where it belongs."

2006



Yunus and Grameen Bank win Nobel Peace Prize for "their efforts to create economic and social development from below."