Barack Obama Sr., Kenyan economist (died 1982)

Barack Hussein Obama was a Kenyan senior governmental economist and the father of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States. He is a central figure of his son's memoir, Dreams from My Father (1995). Obama married in 1954 and had two children with his first wife, Kezia. He was selected for a special program to attend college in the United States and studied at the University of Hawaii where he met Ann Dunham, whom he married in 1961 following the conception of his son, Barack. Obama and Dunham divorced three years later. Obama then went to Harvard University for graduate school, where he earned an MA in economics, and returned to Kenya in 1964. He saw his son Barack once more, when his son was about 10.