A Nobel Prize-winning scientist known as the Father of the Green Revolution, died at the age of 95 in Dallas, Texas Saturday.
Norman Borlaug’s agricultural innovations helped combat famine in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. The world-renowned agronomist developed a disease-resistant form of wheat that helped increase food production dramatically, feeding hundreds of millions of people the world over, allowing countless previously dependent nations to become self-sufficient.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in 1970.
“Civilization as it is known today could not have evolved, nor can it survive, without an adequate food supply,” Borlaug said in his Nobel Lecture.
The New York Times reports that Gary H. Toenniessen, director of agricultural programs for the Rockefeller Foundation (which funded some of Borlaug’s research), said that about half the world’s population relies on grain developed by Borlaug and his colleagues of the Green Revolution.
The Green Revolution, which began in 1945, refers to innovations that have allowed agriculture to keep pace with population growth. Several of those innovations, including genetically altering plant species, have come under attack in recent years, but Borlaug maintained that a lack of population control was the problem.
A descendent of Norwegian immigrants, Borlaug grew up on an Iowa farm where he was no doubt inspired by the “amber waves of grain” to persue his Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics from the University of Minnesota. In the 40s, he took a research position in Mexico where he developed the revolutionary dwarf wheat — a short, but sturdy form of high yield wheat.
Borlaug never stopped working. When he died, he remained a faculty member at Texas A&M University.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.