Norman E. Borlaug

Dr. Norman E. Borlaug is called "the father of the Green Revolution" because of his work to increase food production and combat world hunger. From the 1940s through the 1960s, this "Green Revolution" advanced agricultural production by developing and distributing improved grains, seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides; expanding irrigation; and modernizing agricultural management. It has been credited with saving as many as a billion people from starvation.

• Born on March 25, 1914, on a farm near Cresco, Iowa, Borlaug worked his way through the University of Minnesota, never forgetting his arrival there during the Great Depression, when desperate people were begging for food. That memory and his 1935 experience in the Civilian Conservation Corps, where many of the people working for him were starving, would have a profound influence on his life's work.
• He worked as a microbiologist investigating fungicides and preservatives for the du Pont de Nemours Foundation and then as a geneticist and plant pathologist for the Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Program. In the latter position he developed mutation techniques that adapted crops to specific climate regions, leading to dramatic increases in crop yields in Latin America, the Near and Middle East, Africa and Asia.
• Borlaug was one of only three Americans awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (1970), the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977), and the Congressional Gold Medal (2007).
• He died at the age of 95 on September 12, 2009.