Norman E. Borlaug, Ph.D. | Academy of Achievement

<!doctype html> <html lang="en-US"> <head><script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/bundle-playback.js?v=HxkREWBo" charset="utf-8"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/wombat.js?v=txqj7nKC" charset="utf-8"></script> <script>window.RufflePlayer=window.RufflePlayer||{};window.RufflePlayer.config={"autoplay":"on","unmuteOverlay":"hidden"};</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/ruffle/ruffle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> __wm.init("https://web.archive.org/web"); __wm.wombat("https://achievement.org/achiever/norman-e-borlaug/","20200917235228","https://web.archive.org/","web","/_static/", "1600386748"); </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/banner-styles.css?v=S1zqJCYt" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/iconochive.css?v=3PDvdIFv" />  <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="57x57" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-57x57.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="114x114" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-114x114.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="72x72" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-72x72.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="144x144" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-144x144.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="60x60" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-60x60.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="120x120" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-120x120.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="76x76" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-76x76.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="152x152" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-152x152.png"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-196x196.png" sizes="196x196"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-96x96.png" sizes="96x96"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-32x32.png" sizes="32x32"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-16x16.png" sizes="16x16"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-128.png" sizes="128x128"/> <meta name="application-name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileColor" content="#000000"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileImage" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-144x144.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square70x70logo" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-70x70.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square150x150logo" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-150x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-wide310x150logo" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square310x310logo" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x310.png"/> <link href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228cs_/https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Source+Sans+Pro:400,600,400italic,600italic,700,700italic&display=swap" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">  <title>Norman E. Borlaug, Ph.D. | Academy of Achievement</title> <meta name="description" content="Growing up on a farm in Iowa, Norman Borlaug learned firsthand the importance of a healthy agricultural economy. In the depths of the Great Depression, he saw crop failures ruin small farmers, while food shortages and farm foreclosures drove ordinary people to violence. An expert in plant pathology and genetics, Borlaug turned his back on a lucrative career in industry to work with small farmers in rural Mexico, developing new strains of highly productive, pest-resistant wheat and maize. When Mexico became self-sufficient in grain production, he traveled to India and Pakistan, war-torn countries teetering on the brink of famine and mass starvation. Introducing crops and techniques he had developed in Mexico, he multiplied the grain output in these South Asian countries many times over. In a few years, they were producing enough grain to provide for their growing populations without dependency on foreign aid or imports. Seeds and techniques developed by Dr. Borlaug have since been implemented around the world by scientists he trained. The increased productivity of existing farmland has saved millions of acres of woodlands from deforestation. This milestone in human history, called "the Green Revolution," saved the lives of a billion human beings who would otherwise have starved to death. In 1970, Norman Borlaug was honored with the Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of the contribution he made to world peace by increasing the planet's food supply."/> <meta name="robots" content="index, follow"/> <meta name="googlebot" content="index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1"/> <meta name="bingbot" content="index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1"/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/norman-e-borlaug/"/> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta property="og:title" content="Norman E. Borlaug, Ph.D. | Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">Growing up on a farm in Iowa, Norman Borlaug learned firsthand the importance of a healthy agricultural economy. In the depths of the Great Depression, he saw crop failures ruin small farmers, while food shortages and farm foreclosures drove ordinary people to violence.</p> <p class="inputText">An expert in plant pathology and genetics, Borlaug turned his back on a lucrative career in industry to work with small farmers in rural Mexico, developing new strains of highly productive, pest-resistant wheat and maize. When Mexico became self-sufficient in grain production, he traveled to India and Pakistan, war-torn countries teetering on the brink of famine and mass starvation. Introducing crops and techniques he had developed in Mexico, he multiplied the grain output in these South Asian countries many times over. In a few years, they were producing enough grain to provide for their growing populations without dependency on foreign aid or imports.</p> <p class="inputText">Seeds and techniques developed by Dr. Borlaug have since been implemented around the world by scientists he trained. The increased productivity of existing farmland has saved millions of acres of woodlands from deforestation. This milestone in human history, called "the Green Revolution," saved the lives of a billion human beings who would otherwise have starved to death. In 1970, Norman Borlaug was honored with the Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of the contribution he made to world peace by increasing the planet's food supply.</p>"/> <meta property="og:url" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/norman-e-borlaug/"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="article:modified_time" content="2020-04-28T01:21:26+00:00"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/borlaug8-Feature-Image-2800x1120-3-760x304.jpg"/> <meta property="og:image:width" content="760"/> <meta property="og:image:height" content="304"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/> <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@achievers1961"/> <meta name="twitter:site" content="@achievers1961"/> <script type="application/ld+json" class="yoast-schema-graph">{"@context":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/#organization","name":"Academy of Achievement","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/","sameAs":["https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://www.linkedin.com/company/american-academy-of-achievement","https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChe_87uh1H-NIMf3ndTjPFw","https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_of_Achievement","https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://twitter.com/achievers1961"],"logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/#logo","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/12.png","width":1200,"height":630,"caption":"Academy of Achievement"},"image":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/#logo"}},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/#website","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/","name":"Academy of Achievement","description":"A museum of living history","publisher":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/search/{search_term_string}","query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/norman-e-borlaug/#primaryimage","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/borlaug8-Feature-Image-2800x1120-3.jpg","width":2800,"height":1120},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/norman-e-borlaug/#webpage","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/norman-e-borlaug/","name":"Norman E. Borlaug, Ph.D. | Academy of Achievement","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/norman-e-borlaug/#primaryimage"},"datePublished":"2016-04-29T23:53:18+00:00","dateModified":"2020-04-28T01:21:26+00:00","description":"Growing up on a farm in Iowa, Norman Borlaug learned firsthand the importance of a healthy agricultural economy. In the depths of the Great Depression, he saw crop failures ruin small farmers, while food shortages and farm foreclosures drove ordinary people to violence. An expert in plant pathology and genetics, Borlaug turned his back on a lucrative career in industry to work with small farmers in rural Mexico, developing new strains of highly productive, pest-resistant wheat and maize. When Mexico became self-sufficient in grain production, he traveled to India and Pakistan, war-torn countries teetering on the brink of famine and mass starvation. Introducing crops and techniques he had developed in Mexico, he multiplied the grain output in these South Asian countries many times over. In a few years, they were producing enough grain to provide for their growing populations without dependency on foreign aid or imports. Seeds and techniques developed by Dr. Borlaug have since been implemented around the world by scientists he trained. The increased productivity of existing farmland has saved millions of acres of woodlands from deforestation. This milestone in human history, called \"the Green Revolution,\" saved the lives of a billion human beings who would otherwise have starved to death. 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role="document"> <div class="content"> <main class="main"> <div class="feature-area__container"> <header class="feature-area feature-area--has-image ratio-container ratio-container--feature"> <figure class="feature-box"> <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image feature-area__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/borlaug8-Feature-Image-2800x1120-3.jpg [(max-width:544px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/borlaug8-Feature-Image-2800x1120-3-1400x560.jpg [(max-width:992px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/borlaug8-Feature-Image-2800x1120-3.jpg"></div> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <figcaption class="feature-area__text ratio-container__text container"> <div class="feature-area__text-inner text-white"> <h2 class="serif-8 feature-area__text-subhead back"><a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever">All achievers</a></h2> <h1 class="serif-1 entry-title feature-area__text-headline">Norman E. Borlaug, Ph.D.</h1> <h5 class="sans-6 feature-area__blurb">Nobel Prize for Peace</h5> </div> </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </header> </div>  <nav class="in-page-nav row fixedsticky"> <ul class="nav text-xs-center clearfix" role="tablist"> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link active" data-toggle="tab" href="#biography" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Biography">Biography</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#profile" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Profile">Profile</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#interview" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Interview">Interview</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#gallery" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Gallery">Gallery</a> </li> </ul> </nav> <article class="post-2007 achiever type-achiever status-publish has-post-thumbnail hentry careers-biologist careers-botanist careers-geneticist"> <div class="entry-content container clearfix">  <div class="tab-content"> <div class="tab-pane active" id="biography" role="tabpanel"> <section class="achiever--biography"> <div class="row"> <header class="editorial-article__header col-md-8 col-md-offset-2 text-xs-center"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> <h3 class="serif-3 quote-marks">The only way that the world can keep up with food production is by the improvement of science and technology.</h3> </header> </div> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar clearfix"> <h2 class="serif-3 p-b-1">The Father of the Green Revolution</h2> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> March 25, 1914 </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Death</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> September 12, 2009 </dd> </div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Ernest Borlaug was born in Saude, Iowa, on the farm of his grandfather, Nels Olson Borlaug, who was the son of Norwegian immigrants. From the age of seven, young Norman worked on the family farm, where he learned the basics of agriculture, and enjoyed an active outdoor life. School for the young farmboy meant a one-room country schoolhouse until he was old enough to attend the high school in nearby Cresco. In high school, Borlaug was an outstanding athlete, playing football and baseball and achieving statewide renown as a competitive wrestler. He credits his high school wrestling coach, Dave Bartelma, with inspiring him to excel at whatever he attempted.</span></p> <figure id="attachment_9204" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9204" style="width: 1011px" class="wp-caption alignright"><noscript><img class="wp-image-9204 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Wrestler2.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9204 size-full lazyload" alt="Norman Borlaug, an All-American wrestler at the University of Minnesota in the 1930s. More than 50 years later, Borlaug was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" width="1011" height="1314" data-sizes="(max-width: 1011px) 100vw, 1011px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Wrestler2.jpg 1011w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Wrestler2-292x380.jpg 292w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Wrestler2-585x760.jpg 585w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Wrestler2.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-9204" class="wp-caption-text">Norman E. Borlaug was an All-American wrestler at the University of Minnesota in the 1930s. Borlaug was later inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.</figcaption></figure> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Although his family was spared the worst effects of the Great Depression, Borlaug saw many of his neighbors lose their farms and homes. Across rural America, the dispossessed threatened violence against bank agents and local law enforcement. Borlaug’s grandfather, who had taught him so much about farming, encouraged him to leave the countryside and pursue higher education. A newly created federal program, the National Youth Administration, made it possible for Norman Borlaug to attend the University of Minnesota, even though his test scores did not qualify him for immediate admission. Immersed in the academic environment of the Minneapolis campus, Borlaug made rapid progress and soon joined the forestry program of the university’s College of Agriculture. He also recruited Dave Bartelma to coach the University of Minnesota wrestling team, and assisted Bartelma in introducing the sport to the state’s high schools. Although Borlaug’s wrestling career ended after college, he would eventually be inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">To support himself at school, Borlaug worked a number of jobs, including waiting on tables at a local coffee shop, where he met Margaret Gibson, whom he would later marry. Between terms at the university, Borlaug led a unit of the Civilian Conservation Corps, a federal program designed to put unemployed youth to work during the Depression. Many of the young men assigned to Borlaug’s team were visibly malnourished. Seeing the change in his men’s health and morale as they began to eat regularly — many for the first time in their lives — made an indelible impression on Borlaug.</span></p> <figure id="attachment_9177" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9177" style="width: 535px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><noscript><img class="wp-image-9177 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-CoffeeShop.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9177 size-full lazyload" alt="Norman Borlaug at the coffee shop where he worked, and met his wife Margaret, while studying at the University of Minnesota. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" width="535" height="923" data-sizes="(max-width: 535px) 100vw, 535px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-CoffeeShop.jpg 535w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-CoffeeShop-220x380.jpg 220w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-CoffeeShop-441x760.jpg 441w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-CoffeeShop.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-9177" class="wp-caption-text">Norman Borlaug at the coffee shop where he worked, and met his wife Margaret, while studying at the University of Minnesota. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)</figcaption></figure> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Before and after his senior year, Borlaug worked for the United States Forestry Service at research stations in Massachusetts and Idaho. He had planned on a career with the Forestry Service when he first heard a lecture by the plant pathologist Elvin Stakman. Stakman proposed that crossbreeding of wheat, and of other grains, could produce varieties that would resist the parasitic fungus known as rust, a pest that devastated crops throughout the United States and around the world. Borlaug was fascinated by this research, and when an expected Forestry Service appointment fell through, he decided to remain at the University of Minnesota and pursue graduate studies in plant pathology with Dr. Stakman. Norman and Margaret Borlaug married and settled in Minneapolis while Borlaug pursued his studies, completing his doctorate in plant pathology and genetics in 1942. He was immediately hired by the chemical firm Du Pont de Nemours in Wilmington, Delaware. Although he attempted to enlist in the Army during World War II, the government regarded his work at Du Pont as essential to the war effort and he was refused for military service. At Du Pont, Borlaug’s war work included new developments in camouflage, disinfectants, malaria prevention and insulation for electronic devices. His most significant achievement at the time was the creation of a waterproof adhesive for sealing seaborne supply packages. With the Marines pinned down on Guadalcanal, Borlaug and his team developed the new adhesive in a matter of weeks, enabling the Marines to hold out until the Japanese were driven from the island.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">While Borlaug was engaged in war work, his Minnesota mentor, Dr. Stakman, had taken on a different scientific challenge south of the border. The outgoing President of Mexico, Lázaro Cárdenas, had carried out a revolutionary land reform, breaking up the giant estates of the old ruling class and dividing the land into small holdings, know as <i>ejidos</i>. In the following years, Mexican agriculture was devastated by rust, the parasitic fungus Borlaug and Stakman had studied in Minnesota. Recurring crop failures forced the country to import most of its wheat. The Vice President of the United States, Henry Wallace, persuaded the U.S.-based Rockefeller Foundation to collaborate with the Mexican government in introducing rust-resistant wheat to Mexico. Elvin Stakman led the project; his project director, George Harrar, invited Borlaug to join them. Despite a lucrative offer to remain at Du Pont, Borlaug headed for Mexico in 1944 to lead the International Wheat Improvement Program at El Batátan, Texcoco, outside of Mexico City.</span></p> <figure id="attachment_9196" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9196" style="width: 1560px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-9196 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormWallace.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9196 size-full lazyload" alt="Norman Borlaug with U.S. Vice President Henry Wallace and Mexican Minister of Agriculture Marte R. Gómez in 1944. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" width="1560" height="924" data-sizes="(max-width: 1560px) 100vw, 1560px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormWallace.jpg 1560w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormWallace-380x225.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormWallace-760x450.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormWallace.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-9196" class="wp-caption-text">1944: Norman Borlaug with Vice President Henry Wallace and Mexican Minister of Agriculture Marte R. Gómez.</figcaption></figure> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Borlaug encountered many obstacles and setbacks in his first years in Mexico. A lack of trained personnel, and the resistance of farmers and local bureaucrats frustrated his early efforts, but Borlaug would not relent. Tirelessly, he crossed one strain of wheat with another, trying thousands of variations to find those that would flourish in Mexican soil and resist rust and other parasites. In time, he hit on an unprecedented idea. The wheat-growing season in the central highlands, where Borlaug was working, took place slightly earlier than the season in the Yaqui Valley of Sonora, farther north. If he planted the same seeds at the highland research station during the summer and in the Yaqui Valley station immediately afterward, he could see his crops through two growing seasons in a single year.</span></p> <figure id="attachment_9172" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9172" style="width: 1359px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-9172 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorlaugSeeds.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9172 size-full lazyload" alt="Norman Borlaug (center) in India, with the sacks of wheat he grew in the 1960s, when the country was faced with a devastating grain shortage. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" width="1359" height="1062" data-sizes="(max-width: 1359px) 100vw, 1359px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorlaugSeeds.jpg 1359w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorlaugSeeds-380x297.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorlaugSeeds-760x594.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorlaugSeeds.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-9172" class="wp-caption-text">1960s:  Dr. Borlaug in India, with the sacks of wheat he grew, when the country was faced with a grain shortage.</figcaption></figure> <p>Borlaug’s superior, Harrar, strenuously opposed the idea, not only because of its expense, but because of a widely-held belief that wheat seeds required a rest period after harvest before they could be planted. Only Elvin Stakman’s intervention prevented Borlaug from resigning over the disagreement. Stakman gave Borlaug the go-ahead for this “shuttle breeding” project. Planting the same seeds at different altitudes, where they were exposed to different temperatures, sunlight and rainfall, yielded a wealth of information and enabled Borlaug to create wheat varieties that flourished under very different conditions.</p> <figure id="attachment_9173" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9173" style="width: 2054px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-9173 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Borlaug-Norman-AP-701021026.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-9173 lazyload" alt="Norman Borlaug examines wheat stocks at the Rockefeller Agricultural Institute in Atizapan, Mexico, 1970. He had just won the Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts to promote peace through improved agriculture. (AP Images) " width="2054" height="2976" data-sizes="(max-width: 2054px) 100vw, 2054px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Borlaug-Norman-AP-701021026.jpg 2054w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Borlaug-Norman-AP-701021026-262x380.jpg 262w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Borlaug-Norman-AP-701021026-525x760.jpg 525w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Borlaug-Norman-AP-701021026.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-9173" class="wp-caption-text">Norman Borlaug examines wheat stocks at the Rockefeller Agricultural Institute in Atizapan, Mexico, 1970. He had just won the Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts to promote peace through improved agriculture. (AP Images)</figcaption></figure> <p>Borlaug moved his family to Mexico City and made a long-term commitment to Mexican agriculture. He became active in his local community as well, coaching Mexico’s first Little League team. As his breeding techniques grew more and more sophisticated, he realized the tall thin stalks of wheat he had been growing too frequently collapsed under the weight of their own grain. In the early ’50s, Borlaug acquired a variety of dwarf wheat from Japan and cross-bred it with North American strains to produce a semi-dwarf strain with a thicker, stronger stalk, capable of supporting a heavier load of grain. Crossing these with his rust-resistant strains produced ideal wheat for Mexico’s needs.</p> <figure id="attachment_9170" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9170" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-9170 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-U1684558.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9170 size-full lazyload" alt="Dr. Norman Borlaug in Toluca, Mexico in 1970, the year in which he received the Nobel Prize for Peace, standing amidst the wheat he developed during the Green Revolution. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)" width="2280" height="3397" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-U1684558.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-U1684558-255x380.jpg 255w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-U1684558-510x760.jpg 510w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-U1684558.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-9170" class="wp-caption-text">Dr. Norman Borlaug in Toluca, Mexico in 1970, the year in which he received the Nobel Prize for Peace, standing amidst the wheat he developed during the Green Revolution. Borlaug has been awarded innumerable honors, including the Nobel Prize for Peace, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. He is credited with saving more than a billion people around the world from starvation. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)</figcaption></figure> <p>By 1963, more than 95 percent of the wheat harvested in Mexico was grown from seed developed by Borlaug. The country was now producing more than enough wheat for its needs and was exporting wheat to the rest of the world, while Borlaug’s techniques were being applied to other grains. The project first proposed by Henry Wallace had grown into the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), a training institute funded jointly by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations and the Mexican government. Borlaug directed CIMMYT for over 30 years. The scientists he trained, and the strains of wheat and corn he developed, spread around the world, and other governments sought Borlaug’s services to address their food shortages.</p> <figure id="attachment_9186" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9186" style="width: 1129px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-9186 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NixonNormColor.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9186 size-full lazyload" alt="President Richard Nixon welcomes Norman Borlaug to the White House after he received the Nobel Peace Prize. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" width="1129" height="1490" data-sizes="(max-width: 1129px) 100vw, 1129px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NixonNormColor.jpg 1129w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NixonNormColor-288x380.jpg 288w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NixonNormColor-576x760.jpg 576w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NixonNormColor.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-9186" class="wp-caption-text">President Nixon welcomed Norman Borlaug to the White House after Borlaug received the Nobel Prize for Peace.</figcaption></figure> <p>In the 1960s, Pakistan and India were on the brink of war, and the entire subcontinent of South Asia was beset with famine and starvation. The United States was sending more than a fifth of its wheat crop to the subcontinent as emergency aid, but uncounted thousands of men, women and children were starving to death. Scientists in both countries, familiar with Borlaug’s work in Mexico, urged him to visit the region. Borlaug’s first trip to South Asia was unsuccessful, as agricultural communities in both India and Pakistan resisted his proposals to increase their crop yield. By 1965, the situation had grown so desperate that the governments of both countries insisted he return and apply his expertise to the crisis.</p> <figure id="attachment_44275" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-44275" style="width: 1183px" class="wp-caption alignright"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-44275 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Neil-Armstrong-Dr.-Norman-Borlaug-Olivia-de-Havilland-1987-Summit-Scottsdale-AZ.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-44275 lazyload" alt="" width="1183" height="810" data-sizes="(max-width: 1183px) 100vw, 1183px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Neil-Armstrong-Dr.-Norman-Borlaug-Olivia-de-Havilland-1987-Summit-Scottsdale-AZ.jpg 1183w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Neil-Armstrong-Dr.-Norman-Borlaug-Olivia-de-Havilland-1987-Summit-Scottsdale-AZ-380x260.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Neil-Armstrong-Dr.-Norman-Borlaug-Olivia-de-Havilland-1987-Summit-Scottsdale-AZ-760x520.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Neil-Armstrong-Dr.-Norman-Borlaug-Olivia-de-Havilland-1987-Summit-Scottsdale-AZ.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-44275" class="wp-caption-text">1986: Golden Plate Awards Council member and Summit moderator Dame Olivia de Havilland presenting the commemorative Achievement Award to Dr. Norman E. Borlaug during the American Academy of Achievement’s 25th anniversary Salute to Excellence program held at historic Mount Vernon, the estate of George Washington.</figcaption></figure> <p>In the West, popular books predicted catastrophic famine in Asia and the rest of the world, with deaths in the hundreds of millions. No improvements in food production could possibly keep pace with the growth in population, they claimed, but Borlaug set to work with his characteristic fervor, despite formidable obstacles. Seed shipments were delayed and contaminated, bureaucrats and farmers resisted change to their accustomed routines. With Pakistan and India at war, Borlaug’s teams often operated within sound of artillery fire, but he succeeded in importing and planting his Mexican seeds, and within a single season was producing crops on a scale South Asia had never seen before. As the threat of famine receded, war fever diminished and a fragile peace returned to the region. <span class="s1">Pakistan became self-sufficient in wheat production by 1968; India was self-sufficient in all cereal crops by 1974. Since then, grain production in both countries has consistently outpaced population growth. Borlaug’s achievements in Mexico, India and Pakistan were hailed as a Green Revolution. The scientists Borlaug had trained in Mexico and Asia spread his techniques and grains to Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Indonesia, to continental South America and to Africa. Around the world, infant mortality rates fell and life expectancy rose. In many countries, the rising standard of living reduced social tensions and political violence.</span></p> <figure id="attachment_9191" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9191" style="width: 1328px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-9191 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMargaretFlowers.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-9191 lazyload" alt="Norman and Margaret Borlaug met in college and enjoyed 69 years of marriage. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" width="1328" height="1040" data-sizes="(max-width: 1328px) 100vw, 1328px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMargaretFlowers.jpg 1328w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMargaretFlowers-380x298.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMargaretFlowers-760x595.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMargaretFlowers.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-9191" class="wp-caption-text">Norman and Margaret Borlaug met in college and enjoyed 69 years of marriage. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)</figcaption></figure> <p>By 1970, Borlaug had returned to Mexico, and was busy at work in the fields an hour’s drive from his home, when his wife brought word that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. He is the only agriculturalist ever to have been so honored. A descendant of Norwegian immigrants — men and women who had come to America to escape a food shortage in their homeland — Borlaug traveled to his ancestral homeland to be honored for securing the food supply for countless millions around the world. Shortly after receiving the Nobel Prize, Borlaug established a World Food Prize, to honor others who have made outstanding contributions to improving the world’s food supply. Every year, the World Food Prize helps focus the world’s attention on issues of food production.</p> <figure id="attachment_9169" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9169" style="width: 1218px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-9169 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-DWF15-14588.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-9169 lazyload" alt="In 2001, Norman Borlaug, age 87, revisits Green Revolution farms in India. (© Pallava Bagla/Corbis)" width="1218" height="1791" data-sizes="(max-width: 1218px) 100vw, 1218px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-DWF15-14588.jpg 1218w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-DWF15-14588-258x380.jpg 258w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-DWF15-14588-517x760.jpg 517w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-DWF15-14588.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-9169" class="wp-caption-text">In 2001, Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, at age 87, revisits his Green Revolution farms in India. (© Pallava Bagla/Corbis)</figcaption></figure> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">In the 1980s, Borlaug’s methods were criticized by some environmentalists for their reliance on chemical pesticides and fertilizers, but Borlaug was quick to point out that by increasing the productivity of existing farmland, his followers removed the necessity for destroying standing forests to clear additional farmland. In India alone, wooded areas the size of California were spared because of his work. Lobbying by Western activists blocked Borlaug’s first efforts in Africa, but when a devastating famine struck Ethiopia in 1984, the Japanese industrialist Roichi Sasakawa approached Borlaug about starting a new program there. In his 70s, Borlaug agreed to head the Sasakawa Africa Association, and was soon doubling grain production in half a dozen African countries. Through a joint venture with the Carter Center, founded by former U.S. President <span class="s2">Jimmy Carter</span>, the program trained over eight million farmers in 15 countries. While much of the continent lacks the roads and other infrastructure to modernize its agriculture, former President Carter took up the cause, and agricultural progress in Africa continues.</span></p> <figure id="attachment_9174" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9174" style="width: 2061px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-9174 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Borlaug-Norman-AP-060213014974-1.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9174 size-full lazyload" alt="Dr. Norman Borlaug gives President George W. Bush a "thumbs-up" after receiving the National Medal of Science at the White House, 2006. The medal is the nation's highest scientific honor. (AP Images/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) " width="2061" height="1951" data-sizes="(max-width: 2061px) 100vw, 2061px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Borlaug-Norman-AP-060213014974-1.jpg 2061w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Borlaug-Norman-AP-060213014974-1-380x360.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Borlaug-Norman-AP-060213014974-1-760x719.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Borlaug-Norman-AP-060213014974-1.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-9174" class="wp-caption-text">Dr. Norman Borlaug gives President George W. Bush a “thumbs-up” after receiving the National Medal of Science at the White House, 2006. The medal is the nation’s highest scientific honor. (AP Images/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)</figcaption></figure> <p>While crop failure and hunger persist in many parts of the world, the mass starvation predicted by many experts in the ’60s and ’70s was avoided by the efforts of Borlaug and his followers. As the years pass, it has become apparent that roughly a billion of the earth’s inhabitants owe their lives to the Green Revolution. Although famine was averted by his past efforts, Borlaug insisted that a concerted campaign to build roads and infrastructure in underdeveloped countries will be necessary to avoid mass starvation in the decades ahead.</p> <figure id="attachment_9167" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9167" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-9167 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-42-18671462.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-9167 lazyload" alt="Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Dr. Norman Borlaug, President George W. Bush, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as Borlaug is awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007. (© Matthew Cavanaugh/epa/Corbis)" width="2280" height="1543" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-42-18671462.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-42-18671462-380x257.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-42-18671462-760x514.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-42-18671462.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-9167" class="wp-caption-text">Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Dr. Norman Borlaug, President George W. Bush, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as Borlaug is awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007. (© Matthew Cavanaugh/EPA/Corbis)</figcaption></figure> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">While Norman Borlaug’s accomplishments are largely unknown to much of the public in his own country, he received numerous honors for his achievements, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Streets and institutions are named for him in his native Iowa, in Minnesota, in Mexico and in India. Margaret Borlaug, Norman’s wife of 69 years, died in 2007. The couple had two children, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. In his tenth decade, Dr. Borlaug continued to consult with CIMMYT in Mexico, to teach at Texas A&M University, and to travel, promoting his ideas to end world hunger. He spent his last years in Dallas, Texas, where he died at the age of 95. </span></p> <p>The impact of Norman Borlaug’s achievement has continued long after his death, and so has interest in the man and his work.  In 2020, the PBS television series <em>The American Experience </em>profiled Borlaug in an hour-long film, <em>The Man Who Tried to Feed the World</em>.  Although the film explored criticism of Borlaug’s work, the significance of his achievement cannot be denied. As the Earth’s population continues to grow, the importance of Norman Borlaug’s contribution to saving the world from mass starvation cannot be denied.</p> </body></html> <div class="clearfix"> </div> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="profile" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <header class="editorial-article__header"> <figure class="text-xs-center"> <img class="inductee-badge" src="/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/inducted-badge@2x.png" alt="Inducted Badge" width="120" height="120"/> <figcaption class="serif-3 text-brand-primary"> Inducted in 1971 </figcaption> </figure> </header> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <dl class="clearfix m-b-0"> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Career</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> <div><a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.biologist">Biologist</a></div> <div><a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.botanist">Botanist</a></div> <div><a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.geneticist">Geneticist</a></div> </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> March 25, 1914 </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Death</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> September 12, 2009 </dd> </div> </dl> </aside> <article class="col-md-8 editorial-article clearfix"> <p class="inputTextFirst">Growing up on a farm in Iowa, Norman Borlaug learned firsthand the importance of a healthy agricultural economy. In the depths of the Great Depression, he saw crop failures ruin small farmers, while food shortages and farm foreclosures drove ordinary people to violence.</p> <p class="inputText">An expert in plant pathology and genetics, Borlaug turned his back on a lucrative career in industry to work with small farmers in rural Mexico, developing new strains of highly productive, pest-resistant wheat and maize. When Mexico became self-sufficient in grain production, he traveled to India and Pakistan, war-torn countries teetering on the brink of famine and mass starvation. Introducing crops and techniques he had developed in Mexico, he multiplied the grain output in these South Asian countries many times over. In a few years, they were producing enough grain to provide for their growing populations without dependency on foreign aid or imports.</p> <p class="inputText">Seeds and techniques developed by Dr. Borlaug have since been implemented around the world by scientists he trained. The increased productivity of existing farmland has saved millions of acres of woodlands from deforestation. This milestone in human history, called “the Green Revolution,” saved the lives of a billion human beings who would otherwise have starved to death. In 1970, Norman Borlaug was honored with the Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of the contribution he made to world peace by increasing the planet’s food supply.</p> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="interview" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <div class="col-md-12 interview-feature-video"> <figure> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZnVgFu8F9cg?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0&start=0&end=6067&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Borlaug-Norman-2008-MasterEdit.01_26_10_26.Still005-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Borlaug-Norman-2008-MasterEdit.01_26_10_26.Still005-760x428.jpg"></div> <div class="video-tag sans-4"> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> <div class="video-tag__text">Watch full interview</div> </div> </div> </figure> </div> <header class="col-md-12 text-xs-center m-b-2"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> </header> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <h2 class="serif-3 achiever--biography-subtitle">The Father of the Green Revolution</h2> <div class="sans-2">Dallas, Texas</div> <div class="sans-2">May 12, 2008</div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8">   <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p class="p1"><b>Dr. Borlaug, in the 1940s, you traveled to Mexico to work with the Rockefeller Foundation, improving the yield of the country’s wheat crop. You encountered many obstacles, from lack of equipment, fertilizer and seeds, to over-farmed soil, and worst of all, the plant diseases. When did you first realize how desperate the situation was?</b></p> <p class="p1">Norman Borlaug: Well, I guess it really came home to me when I tried to organize the first Farmer’s Field Day at the Yaqui Valley, where I spent a good share of my life in research and development. I didn’t speak much Spanish at that time, and had great difficulty expressing myself.</p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/daBFNaqaYOc?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0&start=0&end=184&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Borlaug-Norman-2008-HDCAM-5of5-Orig.00_37_25_21.Still001-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Borlaug-Norman-2008-HDCAM-5of5-Orig.00_37_25_21.Still001-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">Norman Borlaug: The first field day was in 1948.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>By then, I had a new variety based on this Marquis that was always the lowest producer crossed to a Minnesota variety, Newthatch.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And it was still tall, but resistant to the main rust, and high-yielding in the tall wheats.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>So I had a friend in a radio propaganda thing, and through him — who just recently passed away — he was my public contact. He was trained in communications.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And so he had a lot of propaganda where we were going to have this Farmer’s Field Day for lunch.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We would have barbecue ribs and beer — free.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Well, the day came and the only people that came were these young agronomists that were putting in the tests and two farmers.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And the two farmers, they were old pioneers, but I figured they were the poorest farmers in the valley.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But in the days following that — and I explained, showed them the new varieties that were being developed, including small plots that we were increasing for seed production — and told them that this was an ongoing program.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And later that week, one or two of the best farmers in the valley came out and they essentially said, “We heard there’s some interesting things going on here.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And with my broken Spanish, I was trying to explain to them, “But you show them,” and they picked it up.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And so the second year, there was a big increase in numbers, and by the third year there were hundreds of farmers.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p class="p1"><b>Was there a specific event that convinced you that advanced wheat farming would be critical to combating world starvation? Was it a gradual realization based on your research, or just the timing of it all coming together?</b></p> <p class="p1">Norman Borlaug: The timing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But also taking advantage of that timing.</p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/0hGFo2JJq-k?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Borlaug-Norman-2008-MasterEdit.00_06_14_29.Still002-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Borlaug-Norman-2008-MasterEdit.00_06_14_29.Still002-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">When I saw how the farmers were reacting when they got the seed that we had developed, there was no problem with the farmer.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The problem was with the government policy maker because they controlled pricing, availability or non-availability of fertilizer and a whole series of things that didn’t permit us to be big commercial until those defects were corrected.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>So I was very early aware — not in one country, but I saw it in Mexico, in Guatemala, in Peru, in Argentina.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>So you saw this in other countries, the economic bureaucracy?</b></span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: It encouraged me to not wait for years and years and years to try to provoke personal change. You had to have the guts — if you’d permit me to use that gutter term — to make a decision and say, “We’re going to go for it.”</span></p> <p class="p3"><span class="s2"><b>There was a strongly held principle of agronomy that seeds need a rest period after harvesting to store energy for germination before being planted. Everyone believed this principle. What made you believe otherwise?</b></span></p> <figure id="attachment_9181" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9181" style="width: 1168px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-9181 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-HarrarNorm.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9181 size-full lazyload" alt="George Harrar, Norman Borlaug's supervisor in Mexico. They clashed strenuously over Borlaug's proposal for the "shuttle breeding" of wheat in Mexico. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" width="1168" height="938" data-sizes="(max-width: 1168px) 100vw, 1168px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-HarrarNorm.jpg 1168w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-HarrarNorm-380x305.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-HarrarNorm-760x610.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-HarrarNorm.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-9181" class="wp-caption-text">Borlaug and his supervisor, George Harrar, clashed over his proposal for the “shuttle breeding” of wheat in Mexico.</figcaption></figure> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: This photoperiodism opened a whole new idea. Nobody knew why the Minnesota, Montana and University of Manitoba wheats didn’t fit in Mexico. We found out why. We had some of those new wheats planted in many places through the young people that we had trained that came from many countries. Not just the countries I’ve mentioned, but all of Latin America and the Middle East. They were tested, and you could see these differences.</span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s1"><b>Your boss, George Harrar, was against your experiment to expand into the Yaqui Valley Research Station. This was a region with substantial difference in altitude and temperatures, but you insisted on this double wheat season. Is that right?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Well, we couldn’t have the time to produce a new variety, and this was in this whole area of photoperiodism. When it happened, we weren’t sure, because everybody said, “This guy Borlaug is a nut! Trying to adapt the northern wheat varieties to Mexico!” But here we had a Yaqui 48, which was the Marquis — the lowest yielding variety — and the Minnesota wheat, and we had selected out the early types, and they were happy in Minnesota and in Canada and in India.</span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s1"><b>Why did you think that the seeds from one region, which were supposed to need a dormancy period, could go to this different altitude and this different region? Why did you think that it was going to work?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Because if it worked, we would cut in half the time to produce new varieties with two generations a year. First, we did it in Sonora, but later we did it in many other places.</span></p> <p class="p3"><span class="s2"><b>Did you actually threaten to resign when George Harrar said you couldn’t take this equipment and go harvesting up in the Yaqui Valley?</b></span></p> <p class="p3"> </p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/uYukCT7T6wg?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0&start=0&end=160&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Borlaug-Norman-2008-MasterEdit.00_25_51_06.Still010-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Borlaug-Norman-2008-MasterEdit.00_25_51_06.Still010-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/courage/">Courage</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">Norman Borlaug: I stood up and I said, “We can’t produce the wheat that Mexico needs just in the Yaqui Valley or in Sinaloa.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We’ve got to work in all the areas where wheat wasn’t an important crop,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>especially the Bajillo, and if I’m not permitted to do that, I’ll leave.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I stood and I said, “If Joe Rupert wants to accept it, I’ll leave tomorrow.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Otherwise, I’ll wait until you have a satisfactory replacement.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Before I got to the door, Joe Rupert stood up and walked out with me.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And when I got to my office and Dorothy Parker — who was our librarian — she handed me the mail.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And in this mail was a letter written to (George) Harrar by a very practical farmer in the Yaqui Valley who had his farm right adjacent to us.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He used to loan us machinery because originally in 1933 or 4 when Rodolfo Calles was governor, he set up that station where I worked.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It must’ve been a model for all of Latin America — good machinery far before its time, all kinds of the best strains of animals, both dairy animals and beef, chickens, goats, sheep.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>When I arrived, this was all ruined.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The poor guy who was the director, Leon Manzo, he didn’t have any budget.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He wanted to do something, but that’s the way it was. ‘Til I figured if we could get two generations a year, we could overcome this faster.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><figure id="attachment_9193" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9193" style="width: 1184px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-9193 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMexicanWorkers.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9193 size-full lazyload" alt="Norman Borlaug addresses workers at the wheat research station in Mexico. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug) " width="1184" height="828" data-sizes="(max-width: 1184px) 100vw, 1184px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMexicanWorkers.jpg 1184w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMexicanWorkers-380x266.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMexicanWorkers-760x531.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMexicanWorkers.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-9193" class="wp-caption-text">Dr. Norman E. Borlaug addresses workers at the wheat research station in Mexico. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)</figcaption></figure> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">But of course, this put me in difficulty with all of the ultraconservatives, including my professor, H.K. Hayes, when he came to Mexico the first time. I’m sure he knew what I’d been doing, because he was invited there by Sterling Workman, who was the head of the maize program at that time. We were looking at wheat that high, but in the background was some wheat that we were still just harvesting. And he said, “Where was this wheat grown last season?” And I said, “Well, this particular thing we’re looking at here came from Sonora.” He said, “Hell, I don’t know anything about the geography of Sonora.” I said, “Okay, it came and it was planted at 28 degrees latitude north, and we’re approximately 18 here, so that we are 700 miles south of the place where we shouldn’t have planted it. Look at it.” My professor said, “You take one step forward and one step backward.”</span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s1"><b>This revolutionized agriculture, not only in Mexico. What did this tell the world about planting?</b></span></p> <p class="p3"><span class="s2">Norman Borlaug: Yeah. This photoperiodism is sensitivity to hours of daylight and not just total daylight. It’s when you break the cycle. If you start those plants and let them grow through a short period of time and move them, they don’t act the way they acted before. It opens a whole series of new things that didn’t seem possible before.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>How important was shuttle breeding to the success of what you were trying to do in Mexico?</b></span></p> <figure id="attachment_9165" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-9165" style="width: 1466px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-9165 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorMexiFields.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-9165 size-full lazyload" alt="Norman Borlaug spent over 30 years working with Mexican farmers to develop new strains of wheat and corn. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" width="1466" height="1172" data-sizes="(max-width: 1466px) 100vw, 1466px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorMexiFields.jpg 1466w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorMexiFields-380x304.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorMexiFields-760x608.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorMexiFields.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-9165" class="wp-caption-text">Dr. Norman Borlaug spent over 30 years working with Mexican farmers to develop new strains of wheat and corn.</figcaption></figure> <p class="p2"><span class="s2">Norman Borlaug: Well, in Mexico we had a change in rust, that made us create those first single crosses of Marquis times Newthatch — we called them Yaquis. We had four of them — they had different maturity — that were in these international tests, growing it maybe in the beginning at 20 to 30 locations. Later we had more than 100, including India and Pakistan. So the data confirmed our hypothesis: that you could cut the timing in half by planting early — taking a risk in Sonora on frost — harvesting, drying it, replanting and getting a second harvest by middle of June.</span></p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/2pzixfdH-iw?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Borlaug-Norman-2008-MasterEdit.00_30_40_23.Still009-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Borlaug-Norman-2008-MasterEdit.00_30_40_23.Still009-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/vision/">Vision</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">Norman Borlaug: Well, in my mind, I always said, why is it that — by then we’d done testing with the old Minnesota, Montana and Canadian spring wheats —<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Why is it that those things you can’t bring down? Because we had the yield test with them included, comparing to the new ones.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>You can’t bring them where the day length is 38 degrees or less, because they’re the lowest yielding wheats when that happens, and yet here are the crosses that came from this. I had been forced by rust to make a second group to avoid a rust epidemic in Mexico.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The first ones were Yaqui times — or I should say Marquis times — Newthatch from Minnesota.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The second one was Mentana, an Italian wheat crossed to Kenya that had rust resistance.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And combining those, this new rust didn’t cause us any trouble.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Do you believe there were any mistakes made in the Green Revolution? If you had it to do over again, is there anything you would do differently?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Well, if we had gotten these things into commercial production earlier, it would’ve made a hell of a lot of difference for millions of people in India and Pakistan and China.</span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s1"><b>There was criticism of the Green Revolution. Did you find any of it valid? How do you respond to criticism?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Oh, there was an abundance of criticism. I used to tell our team, “Just don’t listen. Keep working.” I figured, from what we saw pretty early, that Pakistan and India had this big potential. We could prove those doomsayers wrong.</span></p> <p class="p3"><span class="s2"><b>What first brought you to India and Pakistan?</b></span></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/hK-Su3dH99o?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0&start=0&end=83&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Borlaug-Norman-2008-MasterEdit.00_44_54_02.Still003-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Borlaug-Norman-2008-MasterEdit.00_44_54_02.Still003-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/vision/">Vision</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">Norman Borlaug: At that time the criticism of Pakistan and India, especially, they said, “With this amount of people, there’s no hope.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>They’ve got to die off to a fraction of the population of today.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And I had seen enough on these tests that my trainees had run in many countries. Do not accept that.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But there’s behind the scene, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation, both of them together had decided that the breakthrough in production should come in India.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The need was the greatest and it was to be built on not wheat, but on sorghum and millet and cassava.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But then the Mexican wheats got into the picture and screwed all of that up.</p> </div> </div>     <aside class="collapse" id="full-interview">    <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You encountered some political obstacles at first, and petitioned the Planning Minister of India, Ashok Mehta, and President Muhammad Ayub Khan of Pakistan for some policy changes. Can you tell us about that?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: I think in the case of Ayub Khan, the President, he came from an agricultural background as a boy in the hills of western Pakistan bordering with China. So he understood what the significance of these kinds of yields were. And the Secretary, I knew him personally, and I sent him a lot of these small samples. And he had seen those demonstrations also. It might’ve been in the spring of ’64 — somewhere around there.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">He had seen those demonstrations. He was a forester by training like I was, but he saw those changes that came about with the varieties and the fertilizer and their right rates of planting. So when I was there the next spring, I met him in the hall, and he had a box under his arm — a little box. And he said, “I’m glad you came this morning because I’m leaving for China this afternoon.” And he said, “That little box I’ve got here is a small sample of all of your wheat.” And it took me a long time to find out — and it’s not documented even now — that the first commercial wheat of the Mexican type that went to China came from Pakistan.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What were the policy changes you petitioned for?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: First was credit to permit the little farmer to buy the new seeds and the fertilizer. Then flexibility in agronomic practices — when to plant and how to plant — and then a change in policy as it relates to the whole system.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What about the market value of the wheat at harvest?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: They used to say the Mexican wheats were a bad quality. So automatically they would dock them ten percent. It wasn’t true because Eva Viegas, our biochemist in the Office of Special Study, she was checking all of those things. But you get that into the literature and everybody believes it, if it comes from one of the most progressive parts of the government.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Is there a part of you that enjoys the fight? This struggle with politicians and nay-sayers?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Sure. Sure. Otherwise, I would’ve given up a long time ago when Paul Ehrlich and the Paddock brothers were saying you can’t do anything in India or Pakistan because of the population problem.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What is it that you enjoy about that fight?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Change. </span><span class="s1">I say that the only way that the world can keep up with food production to the levels that are needed with a growing world population, is by the improvement of science and technology, and with the right policies that permit the application of that science and technology. And that includes availability of the improved seeds, fertilizer — how much of each kind of nutrient — and the control of weeds, which is very important, and then, finally, this whole question of credit and policy on pricing. All of those have to be part of the package.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">We had the good fortune in Pakistan of having a person who was really not supposed to be working in agriculture. Haldore Hanson was the Ford Foundation country representative. Ford Foundation at that time was not working in agriculture. They were beginning to collaborate in India with the Rockefeller Foundation. But in Pakistan, no. But here was Haldore Hanson when we had demonstrated how much improvement you could get in the yield. He brought in from Mexico Dr. Ignacio Narváez, my most trusted, most experienced Mexican who had grown up under the system. He had an unusual economist, Oddvar Aresvik, a Norwegian who was different from the rest of them because he wanted to see what happened with these different treatments. So he actually went out and looked at those demonstrations and he saw the errors that were being incorporated, and so he was strongly supporting Narváez and Hanson.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">And Hanson, the only way he had to get into production was through this demonstration. So he, Narváez from Mexico, and Aresvik the Norwegian economist, and later Bob Havener. The Ford Foundation damn near destroyed the program, when you could see everything was ready to unfold. They sent Hanson as the new director to Nigeria, and they sent Narváez and Aresvik and Havener, who later became Director of CIMMYT, to Lebanon to start the program of dry land.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Around 1965, you started some testing in India and Pakistan. You had 250 tons of seed varieties sent to Pakistan and 200 tons sent to India. Is it true those shipments had trouble getting there from Mexico?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Even before they left Mexico. The organization insisted that this was the first time that a commercial operation was taking place, and that their seed organization, the <i>Semillas Mejoradas</i>, had to enter into the operation, because it was government-to-government. This organization was notoriously bad for producing seed that had bad germination, mixtures of varieties, but they got the contract.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Wasn’t there some trouble at customs?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: There was trouble. I thought my boss, Dr. Wellhausen, was away on home leave, and he said, “Norm, you’ve got to stay in the office here and not be running up to Sonora now with all of this, because the whole program will depend on what you do here.” And I said, “Yes, sir.” But when all of the trouble started happening in Sonora, I just went up there, see what I could do, find out the facts. And when the seed arrived, it arrived too late. It was shipped from a coöp in Hermosillo, not in the Yaqui Valley, because the harvest was finishing when we got noticed from ship to seed; so it came from Hermosillo. We ended up with bad germination. The seed arrived too late for us to run germination tests because it arrived in the middle of December. We wanted it the middle of October. So we planted without germination tests. I was in southern Pakistan and Narváez was in northern Pakistan, and a few days after planting, we were digging and we saw something was wrong with the germination. So we told the ministers to double the seeding rate, and of course that doubled the cost.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What was the problem with the seeds?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: The problem with the seed was that in the same warehouse they had commercial grain seed, and they used the dosage of methyl bromide, a fumigant, for a commercial grain, which raised havoc with the germination of the experimental wheat coming out of the same warehouse. Of course, in this period, from the time we shipped in the first semi-commercial quantities of seed to Pakistan and India, there was many things that went wrong. Very few of them went right. Delays in shipment from Mexico, even though I thought I had arranged it all at the border, the Mexican bureaucracy got into it. Then the seed for both Pakistan and India were on the same freighter going out of Los Angeles. I should’ve added that when the seed came to Los Angeles, it was shipped through the area closest to the airport coming from Mexico, and that was where all the trouble was going on in bureaucracy.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>War broke out in 1965 between India and Pakistan in the middle of this experiment, with tons of seed varieties arriving. By doubling the seeding rates, South Asia produced the highest crop yields ever harvested. Do you credit these high yields with quieting the civil unrest between India and Pakistan?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: I knew at that time that civil unrest was tightly tied to availability of food, and that the first thing that there will be an uprising against was shortage of food. I recognized that. So we began this multi-location testing, not just in Mexico and India and Pakistan, but in another 30, 40 locations from Canada to Argentina, and then it was 100 locations. And then you could see clearly what was happening.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>The increased need for labor, for harvesting, for equipment, for storage facilities, for transportation vehicles — this put these countries to work and they put down the guns and went to work and started to feed themselves.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: And it was mostly young people that we had trained that carried the burden, because they had seen the changes, not just numbers. They had seen the plots. So you didn’t have any problems convincing them. It was the government policy makers. But fortunately, there were a few like Ayub Khan and his Minister of Agriculture who saw the light. And then not too much later, M.S. Swaminathan and his Minister of Agriculture, (Chidambaram) Subramaniam, and his (Secretary of Agriculture), Sivaraman. They were all three from the south, not a wheat-growing area originally.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You were in Mexico in October 1970, and your wife came out to the fields to tell you that you’d been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: I said, “How did you receive this?” She said, “From the <i>Aftenposten</i>. What’s the <i>Aftenposten</i>?” She didn’t know anything about it. (I come from a) Norwegian background, and I said, “That’s the morning paper from Oslo.” And I said, “Well, how did he know about it because nobody has called from the Norwegian Embassy to advise us.” “Well,” she says, “I asked that question,” and he said, ‘We in the press have ways of learning some things before they are officially released.'” So she came with that story, and I didn’t believe her. And she left, and about two or three hours later, a big group of Mexican newspapermen came out. But right before that, there was a writer — his name is gone now. I’m sorry, I should be able to spit it out. He was a good writer and he had two films on our Mexican program, and he came out with <i>The Christian Science Monitor</i>, and they had just finished interviewing me when all of these Mexicans drove up. I should’ve pointed out that this particular day was the funeral of Lázaro Cárdenas. The President, together with his Minister of Agriculture, Marte R. Gómez, had broken up all of the big estates and distributed the land in <i>ejidos</i>. <i>Ejidos</i> were plots given to families. They didn’t own it, but they owned the right to use it, and this gave lots of problems over the next 50 years that held back Mexico’s development. But that was taking place, and so I said, “I’m behind in my harvest, because it’s rained in Toluca. For me to go to that funeral, there’ll be 500,000 people there. Why should I go?” So I went out to Toluca and that’s where my wife — she found out from the office where I was — and she got a driver and the wife of Dr. Rosburn — they came out to find me. They gave me that message.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Was it especially rewarding to go to Oslo to receive the award because of your Norwegian heritage?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: No. I was so shocked that those minor differences didn’t enter into it.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You were also the only agricultural scientist to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in the 20th century.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Because of that, I established the World Food Prize for agriculture.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President </b><span class="s2"><b>Jimmy Carter</b></span><b> in 1977.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: I think President Carter, coming from a rural background, he had a feel for the importance of food. He was a close collaborator from that period right up to the present time.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>How did you go about establishing the World Food Prize in 1986?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: The original prize was financed by General Foods. The people most deeply involved were Robert Havener, he was then a Ford Foundation employee; the Vice President of General Foods, Al Clausi; and myself. We got this prize approved for food. Then we had spread it to different disciplines in the food system and it’s a very prestigious prize at the present time.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Initially, you went to the Rockefeller Foundation, but they had no resources available for this. Was it a struggle to get it off the ground?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Oh, it was a hell of a struggle at first, to convince the hierarchy of General Foods. The Senior Vice President, Al Clausi, he pulled for us and he was really responsible for getting General Foods on board.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Also in the 1980s, you began working with a Japanese investor named Sasakawa to bring your planting methods to Africa. How did that come about?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Well, he called me. He doesn’t speak any English — or didn’t, he’s since passed away — but his deputy had been a reporter in Vietnam, and I had met him in some of the meetings that we had had with the Japanese about this food situation. When he called, he said, “I want to get us involved through Sasakawa Japanese shipbuilding.” And I said, “I’m 80 years old. Too old to start something new.” And he said, “I’m 15 years older than you are. We should have started it yesterday, so let’s start tomorrow.”</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Where did you begin planting in Africa?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: In Ghana. Sasakawa and myself and someone from USAID (United States Agency for International Development) visited five countries, and we thought that Ghana was more progressive than the others. So we started in two places: Ghana and Sudan. But Sudan was under a military government, and finally Sasakawa said, “I don’t want to pay my money to rescue one of you guys from being kidnapped, so let’s leave Sudan.” And we did. We went to Tanzania and later to Nigeria.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What was the mission of the SAA?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: The Sasakawa African Association. This was getting Sasakawa involved in food problems in Africa.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What was different about planting in Ghana, as opposed to planting in India and Pakistan?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Well, first of all, w</span><span class="s1">e had a good training program in Ghana. We had a young Ghanaian who had been trained in Japan. He was married to a Japanese wife and he, of course, was fluent in both the (native) language and English. And when we started that program, we realized that technical training would be important. This guy visited a lot of universities and all the big known name universities didn’t want anything to do with it. But there was a little university in the south of Ghana where a young professor had just come back from a scholarship abroad, and he said, “I’d like to try this.” And he started a training program for his own extension people, and it became very effective. It’s still effective today.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>We’d like to go back and talk about your own background and education. You grew up on the family farm in Iowa. What was that like? Did you have a happy childhood?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: I guess it was. It was a happy childhood as far as I was concerned, but this little farm was 14 miles from a railroad, and so you didn’t know much about what was going on beyond your own immediate neighborhood.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What was it like to go to school in Iowa? It was a small schoolhouse, we understand.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: I went to a one-room country school, New Oregon Number 8, where in the winter there was probably 15 or 16 students. The rest of the year when there was farm work, there was only probably 10 or 12. The difference between winter and spring was that many of the students were still studying when they were 17 to try to finish the eighth grade, and they came only in the winter months when there was no work in the fields. So the teacher — one teacher — had to deal with five-and-a-half year olds to 17-year-old boys. How she did it is beyond me.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Did you have the same teacher every year?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Sometimes we had the same teacher for two or three years, but generally it changed at least every two years.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Did you like school? Were you a good student?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Yes, yes. Probably because of my grandfather. He was self-educated, but he had a high regard for school. He always used to say, ‘When you’re young you’d better study to put information in your brain that you will use later in life to improve not only your well-being but that of your neighbors and friends”. Quite by accident, that was the slogan of the Rockefeller Foundation, which was that their existence was for the well-being of humankind.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What kind of a student were you?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: I was, I think, a pretty good student. My grades were good. In high school I got the American Citizenship Award and the Frozier’s medal, which were two of the honors that were given by that school.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>How did you get to school?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: We walked except when there was an unusual blizzard or storm. Then maybe one of the neighbors would hitch up the sled to horses and come and take all the students that lived near where he lived. But with that exception, you always walked. See, this was during the worst of the Depression. I was in high school beginning in 1929, which was when the bottom came out of everything and the local banks went broke. There was unemployment. I thought it was bad in the rural areas, but 1933 when I went to Minneapolis to try to get into the University, I found out what the Depression really was like — unemployed everywhere.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Was there anyone in school you admired, or someone who challenged you as a young man?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: I guess I owe a lot to my cousin Sina Borlaug, who was later my teacher in grade school. But when she was young and I was very young, I should tell you that there was an unwritten law among the school children in those areas. When there was deep, fresh snow, one of the biggest boys in the neighborhood where most of the people lived, he would go in front and open a path, and then the little ones were in the center. Once in a bad blizzard, I just couldn’t go any longer and I lay down and I wanted to give up, and Sina, who was in eighth grade, she grabbed me by the ear and whacked me on the face and got me going again. This was the way that these young kids went to country school. When it was a very bad blizzard, you couldn’t see — only a few yards — then one of the neighbors would come with his sled and two horses and take the children. But most of the time you walked.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>When you got to high school, wasn’t there a wrestling coach or a principal that made an impact on you?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: He was both. Cresco was a small town, but it had good athletic teams both in football and wrestling, especially. The wrestling coach, Dave Bartelma, came to Cresco when I was beginning my junior year, so I only knew him for two years in Cresco, as he was principal of the high school and wrestling coach. Sometimes he helped with football coaching also. He was a strong disciplinarian, and there was no smoking, there was no drinking with him around. Later, when I was a junior in the University of Minnesota, I got him transferred to Minnesota as head wrestling coach, and he went on from there after the war to become Director of Athletics in University of Colorado. But all through life we were still very close friends.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>How did your own family do during the Depression?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: They were fortunate in that none of them were deeply indebted. They had paid for their land. So when the banks went broke, they lost their deposit in the bank, but they still had their land. That wasn’t taken away. Many of the best farmers had expanded their operations so that they were cultivating hundreds of hectares. They had loans, and those properties were sold at sheriff sales, and those sheriff sales got to a point where they were rigged. This was when the Farmer-Labor Party started. It was a joint undertaking by the laborers from Minnesota and farmers so that this didn’t happen, but it happened over a period of three or four years. When a sheriff sale was announced, there would be somebody that would organize all the people in the area that were going to buy this for a small amount and turn it back to the farmer. And if anyone tried to bid what it was worth, they got beat up, too.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Your grandfather was kind of a renegade, wasn’t he?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: He never got into the action because we were 14 miles out in the country, but his ideas were with the rebels.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>So the Borlaug family did not operate on credit?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: And that’s why we escaped most of the personal problems of the 1930s. I had one uncle who was a bachelor all his life. He was a curious guy also. He was self-educated, but an S and E (science and engineering) economist. He knew what was going on. He bought for himself and for we grandchildren — I was the eldest, probably 12 or 13 — a textbook that was used in economics at Cornell University. He predicted the Depression before it happened.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You were not immediately accepted to the University of Minnesota. You were planning to go to a teaching college, weren’t you?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: I had the ambition to be a high school science teacher and athletic coach. That was my great hope, my ambition at that time, because of the influence of Bartelma. He was a graduate of Iowa State teachers college, now Northern Iowa University, in Cedar Falls.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Was your family supportive of you going to college, or did they want you to stay and work on the farm?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Oh, my granddad was ahead of his time. He was always in favor of education. My dad and mother were too, but Granddad was very aggressive in that. You know, as he used to say, “You’ve got to fill your head with new ideas so you can use them later to improve your own status and that of the neighborhood.”</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What made you change your mind and go to the University of Minnesota?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Well, first I should point out that the second person that had a great influence on my life was George Chamberlain. Now he had graduated from Cresco High School a year before I started, so I didn’t know him. But his father had been County Recorder for 20 years and he knew my dad. He used to tell Dad that, “Your son should go to the University of Minnesota, where my son is a halfback on the football team.” Eventually this happened. Chamberlain took me up there with my closest friend in high school, Ervin Upton; he took the two of us. Prior to that, all the good wrestlers from Cresco High School went to the University of Michigan or Iowa State. So I was a renegade. I went to Minnesota because of George Chamberlain, and George Chamberlain was a good public relations man, because later in life he was the vice president in charge of personnel at General Mills, and later a number of other large milling and baking companies.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>So you and your friend from Cresco decided to go to the University of Minnesota. You don’t have a lot of money in your pocket, you don’t have an acceptance letter, and you get to this big city, right off the farm. What happened when you got to Minnesota?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: I thought things were bad in Cresco, the little town. There weren’t any industries there, but I saw all the local banks go broke. I saw farmers lose their land — sheriff sales. I saw the reaction of the farmers. That was later the Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota. It was during this period when labor and farmers came together to form the Farmer-Labor Party, of which later (Hubert) Humphrey was a vice president from that background and also (Walter) Mondale. And the third one that came up through that rank that played even a greater role in what happened to me was Orville Freeman. He was a football player and I knew him. We were the same class, and he later became Secretary of Agriculture of the U.S.A. during the worst — the period when Franklin Roosevelt had to make all of the changes that brought us out of the Depression. Of course, the person who everybody looked to bring us out of the Depression was Herbert Hoover. He had done so much for poor people in Belgium and in a number of European countries. But he took office right when everything collapsed and he couldn’t cope with it. When Roosevelt was elected, those were when the big changes took place.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>When you got to the University of Minnesota, you had to take an exam, didn’t you?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Yes. This was a technicality. </span><span class="s1">I had good grades. Erv Upton, my close friend had good grades, too. But we had to take this entrance exam because the ninth grade — first year of high school in Minnesota — was a junior high school, and so that credit didn’t count in math and science. So we had to take this special exam and I flunked it. Erv Upton passed it, and I was scared. I figured if I failed it, I wouldn’t have any chance of getting in. So I failed it beautifully. And then George Chamberlain, the organizer, he was a pretty spicy guy himself. It was the first year that they were organizing the general college, which was the beginning of the junior college movement to give people who hadn’t qualified for their whole university course or who wanted to get some more education and go back to the farm. So Chamberlain got me, took me over to the new dean — he had just come back from a scholarship in London — and he said, “Something’s wrong with your testing. This guy is not as dumb as your tests show you. I think you should give him a chance.” And so it was the first year of this general college, which gave an Associate of Arts degree after two years, and that was expected to be a terminal course. It turned out it wasn’t.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You went into this junior college, but you didn’t stay there very long.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: No. See, this was new. Nobody knew what the general college was. That’s where the people were that had failed to get into the University proper. It was on campus, but it was kind of a no man’s land, and it was during the worst of the Depression.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I remember a week before classes were to start, when I had finally been accepted, on my own I went and walked downtown, which was probably three miles from Dinkytown, the University settlement, and I was wandering around like a country boy and I saw a lot of people. This was over in the vegetable and the agricultural section, and I saw all these people milling around, and I went over to see what it was all about, and this was when the milk strike was going on. And I was standing there stupidly seeing this, and the photographer put his tripod up, climbed up on a car that had a canvas roof — not a metal roof — and his foot went through. And when that happened, the crowd took that photographer and beat the hell out of him, busted up his camera. And when this was happening, the milk drivers came out of their big, secured place and I suddenly realized I was someplace I shouldn’t be, because I saw these people being clubbed with baseball bats and other clubs. And I thought things were bad in Cresco, but it was much worse in the large cities. The unemployed, especially the youth, had no chance of jobs. There were hundreds, just thousands riding the rails looking for jobs.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>So you’re at the University of Minnesota, you were accepted to the general college, but you didn’t stay there very long. Very early on, you chose to specialize in forestry. Can you tell us how you got into the University proper, and why you selected forestry?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: First I need to tell you about the dean of the program, Fred Hovde. George Chamberlain knew him from football days, because he had been captain of the football team, I think, in ’29, and he had gone to London on a scholarship, and he was back. This was his first year back, when they opened the general college, and he was a wonderful person. Later he became President at Purdue University, but that was a long way down the road. He was a chemical engineer by training and a Rhodes Scholar as well as a good athlete. Chamberlain knew him, and he was a guy that even with the bad score on the special exam, he said, “You guys aren’t theoreticians. This guy isn’t as bad as you think he is.” So he got me into the general college.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I suppose it was about a year later, in the spring, I went to see him — Fred Hovde, the dean — because I had good grades. And I said, “I’d like to transfer. I don’t see anything coming of this Associate of Arts degree.” But, of course, I couldn’t see the big picture at that time. But he asked me what I wanted to transfer to and why, just like you were. “Well,” I said, “I like the outdoors, hunting and fishing, and I know quite a bit about bee stings, the behavior of animals and plants also, especially trees.” I had done this on my own. And so he asked me, “Why do you want to go there?” And I told him just what I’ve told you now. And so after asking a lot of questions, he said, “Okay, we’ll give you a chance.” That’s where it all started.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">The summer of your freshman year, you were expected to go to (Lake) Itasca Park, where the University, the College of Forestry, had a hands-on summer training program. But I couldn’t go the first year. I didn’t have any money. I worked for a local canning company, and then I went the second year. That training course was during the academic year, the spring term of the University. So you weren’t losing credits in the University, this was part of your curriculum. So I went through this, and then I didn’t have any money, so Margaret I think typed 56 letters asking for summer work. I only got one reply and it was from the Northeast Forest Experiment Station in New Haven, Connecticut, where a very progressive director offered me a summer job.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">So I hitchhiked out there, and this was Dr. Berra, and this was unique. His whole summer workforce were students, unlike any other program, and he was concerned about we young students. I have a picture, about six months later, in one of these camps. By that time Bartelma had moved to Minnesota, so Upton, myself and our whole wrestling squad and Dave Bartelma are showing the squadron certain key maneuvers in our wrestling.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>At the University of Minnesota, you worked a number of odd jobs, and one of the jobs was at a coffee shop where you worked for meals. Can you tell us about that, and about a girl you met named Margaret Gibson?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Well, that was the first job. As soon as we arrived in Minneapolis, Chamberlain took Upton and I down to the university coffee shop. It was a small restaurant with three bars and a set of booths down one side. This guy was an athlete and he had been on the U.S. Olympic team. A huge guy — he must’ve weighed 275 pounds — fat, explosive. He used to throw the hammer in the Olympics of 1928, I suppose it was. So he owned this coffee shop. His mother took care of all the food they cooked and the student workers. They were trying to help students, but just to give you a feel of how bad things were, our breakfast was a cup of coffee, two pieces of toast and six prunes. That was our pay for working an hour-and-a-half for breakfast.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">But it was bonding together many of these emergency programs that put me through the University. By that time things were so bad that Eleanor Roosevelt, especially, the wife of Franklin, she said, “We’re going to lose a whole generation of young people unless we give them a chance for education.” And from her activity came the NYA: National Youth Administration. This led to each state appointing a director of NYA, and they got a certain sum of money to be used by university professors. They would pick a good student — you had to have a B-plus average — and you would go for an interview and they tried to find out why you were ticking. The first year I got assigned to the Department of Entomology, pinning up those little bugs. This graduate student was working on his doctorate degree, so I pinned up his little bugs. This was a Japanese pine sawfly, a very small insect. Then I cleaned up the labs for all the other professors.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>So how did you meet your wife, Margaret?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: At that university coffee shop. Generally, all of the students were working toward their board, and the breakfast was what I told you: two pieces of toast, a cup of coffee and five prunes. That was not because they were bad people, but they were in financial trouble, and before the beginning of my second year they went broke. So things were bad everywhere.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">But by that time, the NYA — the National Youth Administration — and many of these other jobs were opening up, and so I shifted to those. But I met Margaret, and she was working for her board also. She was two years ahead of me in the College of Education to become a teacher. She got to Minnesota because of her two brothers. Bill, the eldest of the family had graduated from Michigan in communications, and he was in charge of the alumni publication. But her second brother and third brother were football players. George was captain, I think, in 1929 of the football team.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>And Margaret began to work with her brother on the alumni publication?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Right. So I used to see her every day, and she asked what I was studying. By that time, I had decided I wanted to be a forester, and she didn’t know anything about that. But we kept talking, and she was as poor as I was, although she had better contacts because of the three brothers. But eventually, when the coffee shop went broke, she was in trouble also before she started working part-time as a proofreader on the alumni magazine with her brother.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>In another job, you worked with the Civilian Conservation Corps, and you worked alongside people who were starving, and saw the impact receiving food had on them. What do you think you learned from that?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Well, I saw this happen before my own eyes. The Civilian Conservation Corps was the outgrowth of Eleanor Roosevelt’s ideas of saving a generation of students during the worst of the Depression. It so happened that conservation at that time sounded pretty good — saving wildlife. It had public appeal. I guess it was my third year that the Civilian Conservation Corps had expanded greatly as one step towards doing something for the young.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">And so that’s when I wrote those 56 letters and I got one answer from Dr. Ed Berra from Connecticut. At that time, the Forest Research Center was in Yale, and he was professor there. But he was looking at the social problems as well as the technical problem. That summer I think there must be 15 of we undergraduates that were there with him, and he gave us responsibility that nobody at our age ever had before.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I was a leader in two of those CCC camps. I was a leader after a weather disaster, the hurricane of 1938. Ordinarily, the hurricanes come up the coast and go off into the Atlantic, and New England doesn’t suffer. But this time there was a tremendous low pressure area in New England. So this hurricane in 1938 that had gone out to sea was sucked back and it hit Rhode Island first, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire. Tremendous destruction. So the Forest Service organized the Timber Salvage Operation.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I came into that and saw these young kids 16 and 17 years old — that were coming out of the slum areas mostly of Boston and other cities. They were hungry and miserable and I saw them become young citizens. And in the process, we salvaged a lot of timber because you had to do this because all the roads were blocked. And so the Forest Service, when they went into this Timber Salvation Operation, they wanted some people with experience with fire from the west.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">And by that time, I had spent a season out in Idaho in Idaho National Forest, which doesn’t exist anymore after World War II because it was such a fire trap. It was split up and divided and put into four different national forests, but at that time, it’s the most isolated guy in that fire system. And I was located out in Cold Mountain, which was one of the highest peaks in this back country. It was 45 miles from the end of a road. So in New England in 1939, when the Forest Service started this Timber Salvage Operation, the head of the program in Gardner, Pitcher, he wanted some people to know something about fire from the West, so I was one of those. And that’s where I saw these students, or these young people, come out who work in the CCC — Civilian Conservation Corps. They generally arrived miserable, hungry, and you saw them change as they got food. And many of them came from bad backgrounds, so you were also not only working on fire, but training these people to think differently.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>When you graduated from the University of Minnesota, you received a job offer from Idaho Forestry. But then there were cutbacks and you lost that job, so you decided to continue with your education.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Yeah, I’d done a good job in 1937 in Idaho, and so when I left the supervisor of Idaho National, he said, “Well, I have a job for you the first of next year,” which was the first month of ’38. But then I got a letter about a week before, saying would it be all right if I came June first rather than January first because of budgetary problems.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">So I went over to see Dr. Stakman, who I had only met once about three weeks before the end of the term when I saw that this Dr. Stakman, a world famous plant pathologist, was giving a lecture on these shifty little enemies the fungi — rust fungi — that destroy our crops. So I went to hear this and he was one of the old storied professors. He’d move into a history of background of parasiticum, of the rust fungi, other fungi that were dangerous from the standpoint of our cereal crop, and I was fascinated. And I said as I left that room in mid-December of 1937, “If I ever have a chance to study in graduate school, I want to study under a person like this.”</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Can you tell us about your relationship with Dr. Stakman, and how that relationship changed your course of study from forestry to plant pathology?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Well, Dr. Stakman — the kind of person he was — he was old school. He may have been a plant pathologist, but he was a biologist in the broadest sense, and he wove into his lectures the story of going back to the first — to the Bible — to the rust epidemics. And so when I was asked to delay my arrival to the Idaho National to the first of June rather than the first of January, I said, “What am I going to do here?” And so I talked to Margaret also, and she said, “You were so impressed by Dr. Stakman, why don’t you go and see him and see if you can register for graduate training for these six months?” And so I went to see him, told him my background, and he asked a lot of questions. I told him, “Well, this is kind of just to fill up six months.” He said, “That’s a pretty poor reason to go to graduate school.” But he kept asking questions. And finally he said, “Okay, I’ll accept you.” And so, that’s when everything started to change. At the end of that period, he got me an assistantship which paid a small amount so that the University job and the coffee shop had long since disappeared. But there were these other programs that Eleanor Roosevelt and the CCC (came up with) and so I worked on many of these things and was able to put together enough to live on.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">We had fully decided to get married right before I went to Idaho, but then when all of these delays and complications came, we decided, no. By then, she was hungry just like I was, and she became a proofreader. This was before the time of all of these gadgets that read your proof today.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You decided not only to get your master’s but to go on for your Ph.D. When you completed your Ph.D. you were offered a job at Du Pont. Can you tell us about that move to Du Pont?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: I was not only offered, I’d accepted it. And I’ve forgotten exactly how long I was in Du Pont. It must’ve been about a year-and-a-half or two years when I saw that the Rockefeller Foundation was opening this program in Mexico — the first attempt to help a developing nation with their agriculture. So I applied. I went to see the director of the program who was George Harrar. I didn’t know him, but he was Stakman’s student also. He had finished his Ph.D. a couple of years before I started, so I didn’t know him. But he said, “I think you should apply for this position,” and so I did.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Did you also try to join the military while you were working at Du Pont?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: When I was working at Du Pont my work was classified as essential for the war effort. And I think three times I took my physical exam, because the Categories of Necessity changed constantly in this terrible mess we were in. The thing that kept me going was one of the things I was involved in. There were several. Drinking water safety for canteens. And if we had used the criteria now, those would never have been released. But this was for soldiers who hadn’t had any water — dipping it out of little puddles — and so these things were approved. But the one that carried the most weight was what we did to help keep the Marines alive in Guadalcanal. At that time, all the boxes — where you put either tins of fruit or vegetables or SPAM, which was the meat product of that period — the bonding agent for the cartons before World War II was sodium silicate, which is water soluble. And the reason that our Navy was interested in doing something about this was that the Japanese controlled the air and the water during the Battle of Guadalcanal.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">The only way we had in supporting our Marines on Guadalcanal and some of those other places where we were trapped was at night pitching these cartons, or these boxes of canned fruit into the surf. But the bonding agent for all of those boxes before World War II was sodium silicate which is water soluble. And so after 20 minutes, the bonding came open and the cans fell out in the bottom of the ocean. And I remember vividly when two top officials and a Marine came in and said, “Here’s our problem.” They explained what I just explained. And they said, “Do something about it yesterday, not tomorrow.” And I and my associates worked with various new bonding agencies and it was just when the new plastics were coming into being. And we had a big test room full of molds of bacteria and fungi where we subjected all of our tests. And one of these, which was one of the new plastics, survived very well, and we began using it. And so those things were getting washed into the surf.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You were faced with a difficult decision while you were at Du Pont. You were personally asked by George Harrar to head the Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Program in Mexico, which meant leaving a stable position at Du Pont as the war was coming to an end. Du Pont offered to double your salary, you had a small child at home and your wife was expecting. Why did you want to go to Mexico? Was it your passion for the science or was it something else?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Well, I guess it was because I had seen the impact that the CCC — Civilian Conservation Corps — had made on a lot of the young people that I’d been involved with first in Idaho and later in that Timber Salvage Operation in Massachusetts and all of New England after the hurricane. I read that the Rockefeller Foundation was doing this for the well-being of mankind and that made me curious. Of course, behind the scenes there was Harrar and especially Stakman. Stakman knew the background I came from and I’m sure he told Harrar when I made application that, “You’d better try to convince this guy to join.” So it happened. There was a lot of pressure for me to stay in Du Pont. I think that was a time when Du Pont was becoming a general chemical company. It was buying out a lot of small chemical companies to make what is today Du Pont de Nemours. And I realized that it was an unusually good place to be because I was one of two or three people with a microbiological background. As a matter of fact, if you look in my bio-data, I think Du Pont classified me as microbiologist.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>They did, but you and your wife decided to go to Mexico anyway. What was the state of the program when you first crossed the Rio Grande?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Well, of course, I was lost. I didn’t speak a word of Spanish. And at that time, there were very few Mexican scientists who spoke any English, because this was to be part of the program, to train young hordes of Mexican scientists in all of the disciplines that affected food production, and eventually to turn the responsibilities over to them, to work ourselves out of a job. My first disillusionment was the data that were coming out of the experiment stations — not only Mexico, but when they started to work a little in Ecuador and Peru and even Argentina I saw the same thing. The data that came out of the experiment station were not reliable because who was in charge? They were biometricians — mathematicians.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">At that time, the new thing that was highlighted to save the world was biometry. In Mexico first, and then I found it to be the case in those other countries I’ve mentioned. The variety that became one of my most useful parents was the lowest yielding variety in all of those tests. And why? Because it was the earliest maturing. And since they didn’t harvest when the crop got mature for each variety, the birds had eaten most of the early maturing variety. And the government top scientists at that time were biometricians. They send out the plans of how these young agronomists were to plant the exact numbers of rows and the length of the rows, and we had to cut the whole damn plot. We didn’t have attrition machines. We had traded out with animals. It was a mess. I had tried to convince people that we should take samples out of each big plot, but they were set in their ways. I have found since then that this is the way bureaucracies are formed.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Why was it important to train young Mexican scientists and break cultural barriers in the fields?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Because I saw only errors that had been made, and the best variety that became one of my best parents — Marquis — was at the bottom of the list, never used. I didn’t have any faith in the experiment station because the biometricians never went out to check. They’d send out detailed plans, these young agronomists, and planted them. They harvested only one date — the whole plot — and the early varieties had been largely eaten by the birds. That’s the way bureaucracies are formed. The ones that got the most modern equipment are farthest removed from the real fields that are needed.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You’re famous, of course, for the Green Revolution in agriculture. What is the Blue Revolution?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Well, that’s the name that the International Water Commission has added to it. They say the next revolution will be the “Blue Revolution” — better use of water, more efficient and with better technology.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Every few years Congress renegotiates the Farm Bill, and the story is covered all over the world. Why is the U.S. Farm Bill so important to world agriculture?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Well, this is of course a presidential election year, and so you’ve got to separate the facts from fiction and from politics, and that’s pretty difficult. It’s hard to separate all of those things. I think it’s impossible during the presidential election campaigns.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">All you can hope is that the American people have still a little common sense in their back pocket and want to use it. But there are movements underway. For example, USAID, which used to be closely affiliated also with agriculture, is now affiliated closely with the State Department and Dr. (Condoleeza) Rice. Either she doesn’t know much about agriculture or she doesn’t want to know much about agriculture. The Department of Agriculture is likely to be cut very greatly this year. There are some people even in the organization that are speaking out, like (Andrew) Natsios, who was the former head of USAID. He still says, “Look, agriculture — without food there’s no political stability.” But nobody hears him. And it’s not the scientist in agriculture. They’re complaining about the spending cuts, but they’re powerless.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You’ve said there needs to be a balance between the demands of the expanding population and the pressure it puts on the planet. Why is that balance so important?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Well first of all, we can’t go on at the same rate we have gone on for during my lifetime. When I was born, the population was probably about 1.3 or 1.4 billion people, most of them in Asia and in India and Pakistan, China. Now we’re six billion, and we’re adding about 84 million more every year. The sad part of that is that the majority of those 84 million are being born in countries where there’s already a shortage of food, and where political stability hinges on making food available.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>So looking to the future, what do you see as the biggest threat to mankind?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Well, I would say that unless we have a food system capable of producing the food that’s needed, we will have been indirectly contributing to more and more social upheavals. And this is on an indirect worldwide scale.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>The international agencies working for increased food production and the agencies working for population control seem to work independently of one another. Is it important that they work together?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: This is politics, but they should be working closely together; and they were for a period of time. But when the whole energy thing came into the picture, this energy thing is being blown all out of proportion now. You can’t solve it with a single change in policy. It’s got to be a basic change in the whole economy of countries that have this problem.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>How did the Nobel Peace Prize affect the recognition of your work?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Well, I suddenly realized that whether I wanted to or not, I had to be a spokesman for science, biological science especially, as it relates to food, but as that impinges on nutrition and many other aspects of human progress or lack of it.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What happened in your career that you didn’t expect when you first began?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Well, I was trained in forestry, but surprisingly, even though it came in several different steps, I went back to forestry because it was there that I saw the American chestnut and American elm dying from introduced diseases on my first assignment in Massachusetts in 1936.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>So when you were seeing signs of plant disease in Massachusetts as a forester in the 1930s, you didn’t know how much of your career would be spent in plant pathology.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: No, but I did recognize that genetics and plant breeding and plant diseases and the agronomic practices that permitted the varieties to express their true genetic yield potential were programs that had potential impact to modify food production in the world.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What surprised you most about the later course of your own career?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: When we first saw the broad adaptation of the Mexican varieties, at the end of the first year or two, I had no idea what an impact they could make on the world. But it wasn’t just a variety, it was how you’ve tried to grow those plants, the date of planting, the fertilizer, the irrigation, control of weeds and economic policy to supply the imports that are needed for the variety to express its true potential.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You’ve been decorated by two U.S Presidents as well as foreign heads of state. You’ve met a remarkable number of historic figures. Was there one who made a particular impression?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Well, there’s a book here that was written depicting the life of Henry Wallace, and Henry Wallace, during the worst of the Depression, carried a disproportionate part of the changes that were being forced through Congress by President Roosevelt and Mrs. Roosevelt. He was a very important visionary — and I knew him personally — and when he was Vice President-Elect, he was given a special assignment by President Franklin Roosevelt to go to Mexico as spokesman for the U.S. government. President Roosevelt wanted him to go, as spokesman, to the installation of the new government in Mexico. That was also the time when the president who was stepping down from the presidency — Lázaro Cárdenas, the great land reformer, and his Minister of Agriculture, Marte R. Gómez — were changing everything in Mexico, bringing in the <i>ejido</i> system. Prior to that, if you looked behind the scenes, there was probably only somewhere between 300 and 400 families, and the Catholic Church, that controlled the great majority of the land in Mexico, and that was coming to an end. The <i>ejido</i> system had been established by Lázaro Cárdenas when he began his presidency in 1934 and was now terminating. And so it was a critical period. Now sadly, those people never got titles to the land. They could use it for their lifetime and hopefully pass it on to their children, but it was something that held up development in Mexico for 45 or 50 years.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: I knew Henry Wallace personally very good. He was really involved in getting the U.S. and the Rockefeller Foundation involved in agriculture. And when he used to come to see our program, I’d take him out to show him the wheat and he’d always end up by saying, “Why does an Iowa farm boy waste his time working on this secondary crop of imported wheat? Why aren’t you working out in the corn?” Of course, he was chiding me, but I knew him well. And he played a very important role in changing American agriculture.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What advice would you give to young people just starting out in their careers?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: Study broadly. Don’t specialize too early. Read history. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to specialize, but within the limits that you have to take obligatory courses to get a degree, keep your general education as broad as you can, because you never know what doors are going to open to new opportunities — ten, 15, 20 years down the road — because of changes in science and technology.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What do you think will be the big challenges for the world in the next quarter century?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: We’ve got to do something about energy, because the way it’s going now, energy and food got all tangled up together, probably worse than would’ve happened were this not a presidential campaign year, but it’s miserable the way it is at present.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>One last question. Of all your accomplishments, what would you most like to be remembered for?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Norman Borlaug: I figure that one person is only a limited part of the team, and without a team behind you, you can’t do very much. And it’s not just a team of scientists, but learning to deal with political leaders that you’re not agreeing on many of their policies, but pushing it towards an area where there’s hope that in the future they will see the light.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Thank you, Dr. Borlaug, this has been amazing.</b></span></p> </div>  </aside>  <div class="read-more__toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#full-interview"><a href="#" class="sans-4 btn">Read full interview</a></div> </article> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="gallery" role="tabpanel"> <section class="isotope-wrapper">  <header class="toolbar toolbar--gallery bg-white clearfix"> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="serif-4">Norman E. Borlaug, Ph.D. Gallery</div> </div> <div class="col-md-6 text-md-right isotope-toolbar"> <ul class="list-unstyled list-inline m-b-0 text-brand-primary sans-4"> <li class="list-inline-item" data-filter=".photo"><i class="icon-icon_camera"></i>39 photos</li> </ul> </div> </header> <div class="isotope-gallery isotope-box single-achiever__gallery clearfix"> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2991452991453" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Wrestler2.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug, an All-American wrestler at the University of Minnesota in the 1930s. More than 50 years later, Borlaug was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Wrestler2" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Wrestler2-292x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Wrestler2-585x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.71315789473684" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-WithWellhausey.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug with his colleague Ed Wellhausen in Chapingo, Mexico in 1952. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-WithWellhausey" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-WithWellhausey-380x271.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-WithWellhausey-760x542.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.79078947368421" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-StakmanHarrar.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug's mentor, Elvin Stakman, and George Harrar, Borlaug's supervisor in the Mexican wheat program. Stakman mediated a serious quarrel between Borlaug and Harrar. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Stakman&Harrar" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-StakmanHarrar-380x300.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-StakmanHarrar-760x601.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.69736842105263" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-SchoolForestrySign.jpg" data-image-caption="The University of Minnesota's School of Forestry, where Norman Borlaug studied in the 1930s. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-SchoolForestrySign" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-SchoolForestrySign-380x265.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-SchoolForestrySign-760x530.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5109343936382" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Norm-UofMinn.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug, a student at the University of Minnesota, May 1937. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Norm-UofMinn" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Norm-UofMinn-251x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Norm-UofMinn-503x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.58684210526316" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormsLittleLeague.jpg" data-image-caption="Mexico's first Little League team, the Aguilas, coached by Norman Borlaug. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Norm'sLittleLeague" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormsLittleLeague-380x223.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormsLittleLeague-760x446.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="2.1652421652422" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Norm-OneYear.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug, age one. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Norm-OneYear" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Norm-OneYear-176x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Norm-OneYear-351x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.7233560090703" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormOldHouse2.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug, a high school baseball player in Cresco, Iowa, 1927. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-NormOldHouse2" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormOldHouse2-220x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormOldHouse2-441x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.59210526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormWallace.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug with U.S. Vice President Henry Wallace and Mexican Minister of Agriculture Marte R. Gómez in 1944. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Norm&Wallace" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormWallace-380x225.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormWallace-760x450.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.77894736842105" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormStakmanAward.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug's longtime colleague, George Harrar, presents him with the Stakman Award for innovation in agriculture, named for their mentor, Elvin Stakman. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Norm&StakmanAward" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormStakmanAward-380x296.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormStakmanAward-760x592.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.78947368421053" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormNobelPrize.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug displays his Nobel Prize diploma. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug) " data-image-copyright="wordpress-Norm&NobelPrize" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormNobelPrize-380x300.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormNobelPrize-760x600.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.69868421052632" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMexicanWorkers.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug addresses workers at the wheat research station in Mexico. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug) " data-image-copyright="wordpress-Norm&MexicanWorkers" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMexicanWorkers-380x266.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMexicanWorkers-760x531.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.60131578947368" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMenWheat.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug and Mexican farmers bring in a record wheat crop. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Norm&MenWheat" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMenWheat-380x229.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMenWheat-760x457.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.78289473684211" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMargaretFlowers.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman and Margaret Borlaug met in college and enjoyed 69 years of marriage. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Norm&MargaretFlowers" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMargaretFlowers-380x298.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormMargaretFlowers-760x595.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.55131578947368" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormIndera.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug and Indira Gandhi (1917-1984), longtime Prime Minister of India. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Norm&Indera" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormIndera-380x210.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormIndera-760x419.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.79210526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormHWBush.jpg" data-image-caption="President George H. W. Bush greets Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Norm&HWBush" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormHWBush-380x301.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormHWBush-760x602.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.75789473684211" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormBartelma.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug and an early mentor, his high school and college wrestling coach, Dave Bartelma. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Norm&Bartelma" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormBartelma-380x288.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NormBartelma-760x576.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3194444444444" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NixonNormColor.jpg" data-image-caption="President Richard Nixon welcomed Norman Borlaug to the White House after Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Nixon&NormColor" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NixonNormColor-288x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-NixonNormColor-576x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.68815789473684" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-MomDad.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman's parents, Henry and Clara Borlaug, in 1963. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Mom&Dad" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-MomDad-380x262.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-MomDad-760x523.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3996316758748" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Margaret-College.jpg" data-image-caption="Margaret Gibson Borlaug, circa 1940. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Margaret-College" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Margaret-College-271x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Margaret-College-543x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.455938697318" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Margaretkids.jpg" data-image-caption="Margaret Borlaug in the 1940s, with their children, William and Jeanie. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Margaret&kids" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Margaretkids-261x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Margaretkids-522x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-MargaretFather.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug's wife, the former Margaret Hamilton, and her father. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Margaret&Father" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-MargaretFather-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-MargaretFather-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.80263157894737" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-HarrarNorm.jpg" data-image-caption="George Harrar, Norman Borlaug's supervisor in Mexico. They clashed strenuously over Borlaug's proposal for the "shuttle breeding" of wheat in Mexico. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Harrar&Norm" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-HarrarNorm-380x305.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-HarrarNorm-760x610.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.48157894736842" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-ForestryStudents4.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug and his fellow forestry students in the 1930s. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-ForestryStudents4" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-ForestryStudents4-380x183.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-ForestryStudents4-760x366.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4587332053743" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-EmmaNels.jpg" data-image-caption="Emma and Nels Borlaug with their sons, Oscar, Henry and Ned, in 1895. Henry was the father of Norman Borlaug. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Emma&Nels" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-EmmaNels-260x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-EmmaNels-521x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.70394736842105" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-EarlyBorlaug2c.jpg" data-image-caption="Nels and Emma Borlaug with their sons, Oscar, Henry and Ned, in 1895. Henry was the father of Norman Borlaug. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-EarlyBorlaug2c" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-EarlyBorlaug2c-380x267.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-EarlyBorlaug2c-760x535.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.7233560090703" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-CoffeeShop.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug at the coffee shop where he worked, and met his wife Margaret, while studying at the University of Minnesota. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-CoffeeShop" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-CoffeeShop-220x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-CoffeeShop-441x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.71052631578947" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-CharpingoStation.jpg" data-image-caption="The Chapingo research station in the highlands of central Mexico, where Norman Borlaug worked for over 30 years. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-CharpingoStation" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-CharpingoStation-380x270.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-CharpingoStation-760x540.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66184210526316" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorlaugHomestead.jpg" data-image-caption="The Borlaug family homestead in Iowa. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-BorlaugHomestead" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorlaugHomestead-380x252.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorlaugHomestead-760x503.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.94605263157895" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Borlaug-Norman-AP-060213014974-1.jpg" data-image-caption="Dr. Norman Borlaug gives President George W. Bush a "thumbs-up" after receiving the National Medal of Science at the White House, 2006. The medal is the nation's highest scientific honor. (AP Images/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) " data-image-copyright="BUSH BORLAUG" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Borlaug-Norman-AP-060213014974-1-380x360.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Borlaug-Norman-AP-060213014974-1-760x719.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.447619047619" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Borlaug-Norman-AP-701021026.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug examines wheat stocks at the Rockefeller Agricultural Institute in Atizapan, Mexico, 1970. He had just won the Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts to promote peace through improved agriculture. (AP Images) " data-image-copyright="Borlaug" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Borlaug-Norman-AP-701021026-262x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-Borlaug-Norman-AP-701021026-525x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.78157894736842" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorlaugSeeds.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug (center) in India, with the sacks of wheat he grew in the 1960s, when the country was faced with a devastating grain shortage. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Borlaug&Seeds" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorlaugSeeds-380x297.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorlaugSeeds-760x594.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66842105263158" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-U1704402.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug shows President Richard M. Nixon some samples of his "miracle wheat," during a White House agricultural exhibit in 1971. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="President Nixon Speaking with Norman Borlaug" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-U1704402-380x254.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-U1704402-760x508.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4901960784314" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-U1684558.jpg" data-image-caption="Dr. Norman Borlaug in Toluca, Mexico in 1970, the year in which he received the Nobel Prize for Peace, standing amidst the wheat he developed during the Green Revolution. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Norman Borlaug" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-U1684558-255x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-U1684558-510x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4700193423598" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-DWF15-14588.jpg" data-image-caption="In 2001, Norman Borlaug, age 87, revisits Green Revolution farms in India. (© Pallava Bagla/Corbis)" data-image-copyright="Norman Borlaug visits Indian farms" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-DWF15-14588-258x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-DWF15-14588-517x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.98684210526316" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-0000342334-001.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug, recipient of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Peace. (© Micheline Pelletier/Sygma/Corbis)" data-image-copyright="The Nobel Peace Prize" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-0000342334-001-380x375.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-0000342334-001-760x750.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.67631578947368" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-42-18671462.jpg" data-image-caption="Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Dr. Norman Borlaug, President George W. Bush, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as Borlaug is awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007. (© Matthew Cavanaugh/epa/Corbis)" data-image-copyright="USA - Politics - Dr. Norman E. Borlaug Receives Congressional Gold Medal" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-42-18671462-380x257.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-42-18671462-760x514.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.65657894736842" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-42-16644036.jpg" data-image-caption="Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman E. Borlaug pauses before delivering a speech on global hunger and poverty at the University of Granada in Spain, 2005. (© Juan Ferreras/epa/Corbis)" data-image-copyright="Spain - Diplomacy - Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-42-16644036-380x249.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-borlaug-42-16644036-760x499.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.8" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorMexiFields.jpg" data-image-caption="Norman Borlaug spent over 30 years working with Mexican farmers to develop new strains of wheat and corn. (Courtesy of Norman Borlaug)" data-image-copyright="wordpress-Bor&MexiFields" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorMexiFields-380x304.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wordpress-BorMexiFields-760x608.jpg"></div>  </figure>    </div> </section> </div> </div> <div class="container"> <footer class="editorial-article__footer col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <div class="editorial-article__next-link sans-3"> <a href="#"><strong>What's next:</strong> <span class="editorial-article__next-link-title">profile</span></a> </div> <ul class="social list-unstyled list-inline ssk-group m-b-0"> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-facebook" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Facebook"><i class="icon-icon_facebook-circle"></i></a></li> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-twitter" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on 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Gates III</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Co-founder, Microsoft Corporation</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">1992</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever science-exploration ambitious analytical curious write explore-nature help-mankind " data-year-inducted="1986" data-achiever-name="Watson"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-d-watson/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/watson_760_ac-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/watson_760_ac-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">James D. Watson, Ph.D.</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Discoverer of the DNA Molecule</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">1986</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever science-exploration illness-or-disability curious explore-nature " data-year-inducted="1988" data-achiever-name="Wilson"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/edward-o-wilson-ph-d/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/wilson-032a-1-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/09/wilson-032a-1-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Edward O. Wilson, Ph.D.</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Father of Sociobiology</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">1988</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> </footer> </div> </div> </article> <div class="modal image-modal" id="imageModal" tabindex="-1" role="dialog" aria-labelledby="imageModal" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="close-container"> <div class="close icon-icon_x" data-dismiss="modal" aria-label="Close"></div> </div> <div class="modal-dialog" role="document"> <div class="modal-content"> <div class="modal-body"> <figure class="image-modal__container"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <img class="image-modal__image" src="/web/20200917235228im_/https://achievement.org/achiever/norman-e-borlaug/" alt=""/>  <figcaption class="p-t-2 container"> <div class="image-modal__caption sans-2 text-white"></div>  </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </div> </div> </div> </div> </main> </div> </div> <footer class="content-info main-footer bg-black"> <div class="container"> <div class="find-achiever" id="find-achiever-list"> <div class="form-group"> <input id="find-achiever-input" class="search js-focus" placeholder="Search for an achiever"/> <i class="icon-icon_chevron-down"></i> </div> <ul class="find-achiever-list list m-b-0 list-unstyled"> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/hank-aaron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Hank Aaron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/kareem-abdul-jabbar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Kareem Abdul-Jabbar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/lynsey-addario/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lynsey Addario</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/edward-albee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward Albee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/tenley-albright-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tenley Albright, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/svetlana-alexievich/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Svetlana Alexievich</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/julie-andrews/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Julie Andrews</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/maya-angelou/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Angelou</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/frances-h-arnold-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frances H. 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Cooley, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/francis-ford-coppola/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis Ford Coppola</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/ray-dalio/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Dalio</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/olivia-de-havilland/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Olivia de Havilland</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/michael-e-debakey-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael E. DeBakey, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/michael-dell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael S. Dell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/ron-dennis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Dennis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/joan-didion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joan Didion</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-herbert-donald-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Herbert Donald, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-doubilet/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Doubilet</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/jennifer-a-doudna-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jennifer A. Doudna, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/rita-dove/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rita Dove</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/sylvia-earle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sylvia Earle, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/elbaradei/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mohamed ElBaradei</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/gertrude-elion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gertrude B. Elion, M.Sc.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/larry-j-ellison/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry J. Ellison</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/nora-ephron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nora Ephron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/julius-erving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Julius Erving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/tony-fadell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tony Fadell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-farmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Farmer, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/suzanne-farrell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzanne Farrell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-s-fauci-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/sally-field/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally Field</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/lord-norman-foster/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Norman Foster</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/aretha-franklin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Aretha Franklin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/milton-friedman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Milton Friedman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/carlos-fuentes/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Fuentes</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Athol Fugard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/peter-gabriel/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peter Gabriel</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/ernest-j-gaines/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernest J. Gaines</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/william-h-gates-iii/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William H. Gates III</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/leymah-gbowee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leymah Gbowee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-gehry/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank O. Gehry</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/murray-gell-mann-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/carlos-ghosn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Ghosn</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/vince-gill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Vince Gill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ruth Bader Ginsburg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louise Glück</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/whoopi-goldberg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Whoopi Goldberg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/jane-goodall/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Jane Goodall</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/doris-kearns-goodwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/mikhail-s-gorbachev/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mikhail S. Gorbachev</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/nadine-gordimer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nadine Gordimer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-jay-gould/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/carol-greider-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol W. Greider, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-grisham/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Grisham</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-john-gurdon/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir John Gurdon</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/dorothy-hamill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dorothy Hamill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/demis-hassabis-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Demis Hassabis, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lauryn Hill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-edmund-hillary/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Edmund Hillary</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/reid-hoffman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reid Hoffman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/khaled-hosseini/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Khaled Hosseini, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/ron-howard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Howard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-hume/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Hume</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/louis-ignarro-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louis Ignarro, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/daniel-inouye/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Daniel K. Inouye</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/jeremy-irons/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeremy Irons</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-irving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Irving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Kazuo Ishiguro</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-peter-jackson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Peter Jackson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/donald-c-johanson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-m-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank M. Johnson, Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/philip-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Philip C. Johnson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/chuck-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Chuck Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Earl Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/quincy-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Quincy Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/beverly-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Beverly Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/dereck-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dereck Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-kagame/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Kagame</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/thomas-keller-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Thomas Keller</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-m-kennedy/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony M. Kennedy</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/carole-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carole King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/b-b-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">B.B. King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/coretta-scott-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Coretta Scott King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/henry-kissinger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry A. Kissinger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/willem-j-kolff/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willem J. Kolff, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/wendy-kopp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wendy Kopp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/henry-r-kravis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry R. Kravis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/nicholas-d-kristof/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nicholas D. Kristof</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/mike-krzyzewski/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mike Krzyzewski</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/ray-kurzwell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Kurzweil</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/eric-lander-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Eric S. Lander, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/robert-s-langer-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert S. Langer, Sc.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard E. Leakey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Lederman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/robert-lefkowitz-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/congressman-john-r-lewis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Congressman John R. Lewis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/maya-lin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Lin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/george-lucas/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George Lucas</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-b-maccready-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul B. MacCready, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/norman-mailer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman Mailer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/peyton-manning/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peyton Manning</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/wynton-marsalis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wynton Marsalis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-c-mather-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John C. Mather, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/johnny-mathis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Mathis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/ernst-mayr-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/willie-mays/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willie Mays</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-mccourt/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank McCourt</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-mccullough/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David McCullough</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/audra-mcdonald/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Audra McDonald</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-william-h-mcraven/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral William H. McRaven, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">W. S. Merwin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/reinhold-messner/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reinhold Messner</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-a-michener/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James A. Michener</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/marvin-minsky-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Marvin Minsky, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/mario-j-molina-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mario J. Molina, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/n-scott-momaday-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/story-musgrave/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Story Musgrave, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/ralph-nader/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ralph Nader</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/peggy-noonan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peggy Noonan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jessye Norman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/tommy-norris/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/joyce-carol-oates/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joyce Carol Oates</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pierre Omidyar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/larry-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/arnold-palmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Arnold Palmer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-panetta/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Panetta</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/rosa-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rosa Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/suzan-lori-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzan-Lori Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/linus-pauling/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linus C. Pauling, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/shimon-peres/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shimon Peres</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/itzhak-perlman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Itzhak Perlman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General David H. Petraeus, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/sidney-poitier/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sidney Poitier</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-colin-l-powell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Colin L. Powell, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/harold-prince/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Harold Prince</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/lord-martin-rees/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Martin Rees</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/lloyd-richards/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lloyd Richards</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/sally-ride-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally K. Ride, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/sonny-rollins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonny Rollins</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-romero/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony D. Romero</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Rosenquist</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/pete-rozelle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pete Rozelle</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/bill-russell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bill Russell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/albie-sachs/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Albie Sachs</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/oliver-sacks-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oliver Sacks, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/jonas-salk-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jonas Salk, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/frederick-sanger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick Sanger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/george-b-schaller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George B. Schaller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/barry-scheck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Barry Scheck</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/richard-evans-schultes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard Evans Schultes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-h-norman-schwarzkopf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-schwarzman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen A. Schwarzman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/glenn-t-seaborg-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Glenn T. Seaborg, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/neil-sheehan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Neil Sheehan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-alan-shepard-jr/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral Alan B. Shepard, Jr., USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/ellen-johnson-sirleaf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ellen Johnson Sirleaf</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/carlos-slim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Slim Helú</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/frederick-w-smith/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick W. Smith</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-sondheim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Sondheim</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/sonia-sotomayor/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonia Sotomayor</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/wole-soyinka/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wole Soyinka</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/esperanza-spalding/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Esperanza Spalding</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/martha-stewart/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Martha Stewart</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-james-b-stockdale/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral James B. Stockdale, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/hilary-swank/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Hilary Swank</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/amy-tan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Amy Tan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/dame-kiri-te-kanawa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Kiri Te Kanawa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/edward-teller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward Teller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/twyla-tharp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Twyla Tharp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/wayne-thiebaud/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wayne Thiebaud</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/lt-michael-e-thornton-usn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Michael E. Thornton, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/clyde-tombaugh/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Clyde Tombaugh</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/charles-h-townes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Charles H. Townes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-trimble/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord David Trimble</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/ted-turner/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert Edward (Ted) Turner</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/desmond-tutu/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Archbishop Desmond Tutu</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-updike/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Updike</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/gore-vidal/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gore Vidal</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/antonio-villaraigosa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Antonio Villaraigosa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/lech-walesa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lech Walesa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/herschel-walker/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Herschel Walker</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/alice-waters/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Alice Waters</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-d-watson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James D. Watson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/andrew-weil-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Andrew Weil, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/leslie-h-wexner/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leslie H. Wexner</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/elie-wiesel/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Elie Wiesel</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/edward-o-wilson-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward O. Wilson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/oprah-winfrey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oprah Winfrey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/tom-wolfe/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tom Wolfe</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-wooden/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Wooden</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/bob-woodward/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bob Woodward</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/shinya-yamanaka-m-d-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shinya Yamanaka, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-chuck-yeager/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Chuck Yeager, USAF</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/achiever/andrew-young/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Andrew J. Young</span></a> </li> </ul> <div class="list__close"></div> </div> <div class="col-sm-6 col-lg-3"> <ul id="menu-footer-menu-col-1" class="menu list-unstyled"><li class="menu-item menu-item-has-children menu-our-history"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/our-history/">Our History</a> <ul class="sub-menu"> <li class="menu-item menu-about-the-academy"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/our-history/">About the Academy</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-academy-patrons"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/our-history/patrons/">Academy Patrons</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-delegate-alumni"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235228/https://achievement.org/our-history/alumni/">Delegate Alumni</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-directors-our-team"><a 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