The son of a prosperous goldsmith, Yunus has said that his mother’s generosity to the poor instilled in him from a young age a sense of duty to the poor.

M. Morshed Khan, Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister, said that he and Yunus grew up in villages less than a mile apart in southern Bangladesh and attended the same government high school in nearby Chittagong. “I could feel from that time, he was a great achiever, and that one day he would do something important,” Khan said in a telephone interview from his home. The success of the Grameen Bank has inspired many imitators, and encouraged commercial banks in many developing countries to take up microcredit lending as well.

The Peace Prize “looks like a fitting acknowledgment that the ways of the market are not necessarily evil, that markets can be harnessed as forces of good if done properly,” said Nachiket Mor, executive director of ICICI Bank, which now has about $550 million in outstanding micro loans. James Wolfensohn, the former president of the World Bank, said by telephone Friday that the award testified to “the power of entrepreneurialism”.

“What it has to do with peace,” he added, “is that it gives dignity to families and hope to families. And it’s the lack of hope that is the greatest cause of bloodshed and intolerance.”

ANAND GIRIDHARADAS & KEITH BRADSHER