Obituary - Norman Borlaug

Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution who worked closely with the Foundation in India and Pakistan, died of cancer on September 12 at his home in Dallas at the age of 95. Borlaug was one of only five people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. He is estimated to have saved over 245 million lives worldwide.

As an agronomist, Borlaug developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease resistant wheat varieties at CIMMYT, the international research institute in Mexico established by the Rockefeller Foundation. As a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. With support from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, he then spearheaded the introduction of these varieties into India and Pakistan in the late 1960s, nearly doubling their wheat yields and improving their food security.

In more recent years, Borlaug helped apply his methods to increasing food production elsewhere in Asia and in Africa, and in 1986 he established the World Food Prize to recognize scientists who have improved the quality, quantity and availability of food around the globe. Since 1984, he taught and researched at Texas A&M University where he was Distinguished Professor of International Agriculture and holder of an endowed chair in agricultural biotechnology.

The story of Borlaug's work with the Ford Foundation was told in the LAFF Society newsletter three years ago by Will Hertz and Lowell Hardin.