President Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, also citing the president’s outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.

The committee said it attached particular emphasis on the President’s vision of a world without nuclear weapons.

The stunning choice made Obama only the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize, shocking many Nobel watchers who believed it was too early to award the president. Barack Obama took office only weeks before the committee’s Feb. 1 deadline for nominations. Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson won in 1919. Former President Jimmy Carter won the award in 2002, while former Vice President Al Gore shared the 2007 prize with the U.N. panel on climate change.

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee said this morning. “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

“Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play,” the committee said.