An economist and the bank he started in one of Asia's poorest countries won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. In 1976, Muhammad Yunus began giving small loans to the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh. Since then, his Grameen Bank has grown. It has lent $5.72 billion to more than 6 million poor people.
Nobel prizes were awarded in six categories. Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk won the award for literature. The economics prize went to American Edmund Phelps. Americans swept the Nobels given for science. Genetic researchers Andrew Fire and Craig Mello won the medicine prize. Physics prize winners George Smoot and John Mather studied the origins of stars. Roger Kornberg won the chemistry prize. His dad earned a Nobel in 1959.
Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. Before he died, in 1896, he asked that his fortune be used to honor those whose works had "the greatest benefit on mankind."