Muhammad Yunus is a Bangladeshi entrepreneur, banker, economist, politician, and civil society leader who has been serving as the Chief Adviser of the interim government of Bangladesh since 8 August 2024. Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for founding the Grameen Bank and pioneering the concepts of microcredit and microfinance. Yunus has received several other national and international honors, including the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010. Yunus is one of just seven individuals who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the United States Congressional Gold Medal.

In 1967, while Yunus attended Vanderbilt University, he met Vera Forostenko, a student of Russian literature at Vanderbilt University and daughter of Russian immigrants to Trenton, New Jersey, United States. They were married in 1970. Yunus's marriage with Vera ended within months of the birth of their baby girl, Monica Yunus, in 1979 in Chittagong, as Vera returned to New Jersey claiming that Bangladesh was not a good place to raise a baby. Monica Yunus became an operatic soprano based in New York City. Yunus later married Afrozi Yunus, who was then a researcher in physics at Manchester University. She was later appointed as a professor of physics at Jahangirnagar University. Their daughter Deena Afroz Yunus was born in 1986.

Yunus's brother Muhammad Ibrahim is a former professor of physics at the University of Dhaka and the founder of The Center for Mass Education in Science (CMES), which brings science education to adolescent girls in villages. His other brother Muhammad Jahangir (d. 2019) was a television presenter and a social activist in Bangladesh.