Born July 6, 1935 to a well-educated family of Kolkata, British India, Alam's family was Urdu-speaking and actually had a Bihari origin, but due to there settlement in Bengal province of British India for a long time, they were wrongly considered as Bengali. M.M. Alam completed his secondary education in 1951 from Government High School, Dacca, East Pakistan. He joined the then RPAF now PAF in 1952 and was granted commission on October 2, 1953. Alam's brothers are M. Shahid Alam, an economist and a professor at Northeastern University and M. Sajjad Alam, a particle physicist at SUNY Albany.

His family moved to West Pakistan in around 1971, after the secession of East Pakistan. Being the eldest among 11 siblings in his family, M.M. Alam never married as he had to share the financial responsibilities of his younger sisters and brothers. Several of his younger brothers excelled in various academic and professional careers.