English: Dr. Akhter Hameed Khan, the Founder Director of BARD, is well known in Asia and a large part of the wider world for his distinguished leadership of the Rural Development Academy and the Rural Development Experiments at Comilla, Bangladesh. His attainments as a scholar, educator, administrator and experimentor-demonstrator of innovative rural development activities, his contributions to the improvement of the conditions of the characteristically low income and densely populated agrarian society of Bangladesh have earned international recognition.

He was born in Agra, India on 15th July 1914. He passed his MA from Agra University, India, in 1934 and joined the Indian Civil Service (ICS), the most prestigious and cherished service of British India. He attended the Magdelene College, Cambridge from 1936 to 1938 as an ICS probationer. In 1944 he resigned from the Civil Service due to his disagreement with the colonial rulers on their attitude towards the deplorable Bengal Famine of 1943 (which was the cause of death of about 3 million people) and began to work in a village near Aligarh as a labourer and locksmith. He gave up the work after two years.