Backgrounder: Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's departing maverick FinMin

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis resigned Monday in an apparent concession by Athens for future negotiations with its creditors.

His announcement came just hours after the results of Sunday's referendum on an austerity-driven bailout proposal were proclaimed. The No vote he passionately advocated prevailed with more than 60 percent.

With his signature bluntness, he said he decided to resign because "I was made aware of a certain 'preference' by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted 'partners', for my ... 'absence' from its meetings."

It was also "an idea that the prime minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement," he said. "I consider it my duty to help (Prime Minister) Alexis Tsipras exploit, as he sees fit, the capital that the Greek people granted us through yesterday's referendum."

Since he took office in January, Varoufakis has been in the global limelight, partly because of the cliff-hanging debt crisis of his country, but no less because of his maverick style, particularly his acerbic opposition against austerity.

He once compared the euro zone to "the Hotel California" and characterized the austerity measures imposed on his country as "fiscal waterboarding."

In a recent interview with British broadcaster Channel 4, Varoufakis said Greece has no desire to leave the 19-nation euro zone, but the European Union must reform itself if it wants to survive.

"You cannot have a monetary union which pretends it can survive a major financial crisis simply by lending more money to the (weakest) countries on the condition they should shrink their economies," he said.

He has called for a deal that involves "debt restructuring, less austerity, redistribution in favor of the needy, and real reforms."

In fact, the rebellious trait of the former finance minister can be traced back to his early school days.

He told the BBC that while in the elementary school he decided to spell his first name with one "n", rather than the standard two, for "aesthetic" reasons.

When his teacher gave him a low grade for that, he became angry and has continued spelling his first name with one "n" ever since, according to the BBC interview.

Born in 1961 in Athens, Varoufakis is the son of Giorgos Varoufakis, chairman of Halyvourgiki, one of Greece's biggest steel producers. He is also a dual Greek and Australian citizen.

He pursued his university studies at the University of Essex and earned a PhD in economics there. He also had university appointments at Cambridge, East Anglia and Sydney.

He moved to Australia in 1998, and returned to Greece in 2000 to teach at the University of Athens. In January 2013, he accepted a position at the University of Texas in Austin, the United States.

From January 2004 to December 2006, Varoufakis served as an economic advisor to then opposition leader George Papandreou. After the latter was elected prime minister in 2009, he became a fierce critic of the Papandreou government because of its acceptance of an international bailout. Endi