Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize today for grassroots efforts to lift millions out of poverty that earned him the nickname "banker to the poor".
Mr Yunus (66) set up a new kind of bank in 1976 to lend to the very poorest in his native Bangladesh, particularly women, enabling them to start up small businesses without collateral.
In doing so, he pioneered micro-credit, a system copied in more than 100 nations from the United States to Uganda.
"It's very happy news for me and also for the nation. But it has burdened us with further responsibility," he told reporters at his home in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka.
"Now the war against poverty will be further intensified across the world. It will consolidate the struggle against poverty through micro-credit in most of the countries. There should be no poverty, anywhere."
The secretive five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee said the elimination of poverty was a path to peace and democracy.
"Across cultures and civilisations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development," it said in the award citation.
Mr Yunus and Grameen were surprise picks for the 10 million Swedish Kronor (€1.1 million) award from a field of 191 candidates. The prize will be handed out in Oslo on December 10th.
Returning from a Fulbright scholarship in the United States, Mr Yunus was shaken by the 1974 Bangladesh famine and headed out into the villages to see what he could do.
He discovered the region's women were in severe debt to extortionate moneylenders. Mr Yunus's initial goal was simply to persuade a local bank manager to give villagers regular credit, which the banker said was impossible without a guarantee.
Grameen - the word means "village" or "rural" - has lent €4.6 billion since it began. Of this, €4.1 billion has been repaid, a recovery rate of 98.85 per cent.
The bank, which has turned a profit in all but three years, lends to 6.6 million people, 96 per cent of them women, and has not received donor money in eight years.
Today the bank is owned by the rural poor it serves, with 94 per cent owned by borrowers and the rest by the government.