The Iowa farm boy who flunked his college entrance exam and doubled wheat yields
In 1933 Norman Borlaug failed the University of Minnesota's entrance exam and slipped in through a new two-year college. Three decades later his short, sturdy wheat had turned Mexico into a grain exporter and nearly doubled harvests in India and Pakistan, earning him the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize.
Borlaug was born in 1914 on his grandparents' farm in Saude, Iowa, great-grandson of Norwegian immigrants. From seven to nineteen he worked the family's 106-acre farm, raising corn, oats, cattle and pigs, and studied at a one-room school. His grandfather Nels pushed him to stay in education. At Minnesota he moved into forestry and wrestled well enough to reach the Big Ten semifinals, later earning a place in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.
Paying his way, he led unemployed workers in the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1935, and many of them were starving; the sight marked him for life. A lecture by Elvin Stakman on rust, a parasitic fungus that ravages wheat, oats and barley, redirected him. When budget cuts ended his Forest Service job, Stakman steered him into plant pathology, and Borlaug finished a doctorate in 1942. At DuPont during the war, his team quickly devised a glue that survived warm seawater, so supply crates dropped into the surf could reach Marines trapped on Guadalcanal.
Mexico's government and the Rockefeller Foundation had set up a joint agricultural office, and in July 1944 Borlaug turned down DuPont's offer to double his pay and flew to Mexico City, leaving behind his pregnant wife Margaret and their baby daughter. Over sixteen years with the wheat programme he bred semi-dwarf, high-yielding, rust-resistant varieties. Mexico was exporting wheat by 1963, and between 1965 and 1970 yields in Pakistan and India came close to doubling.
From 1964 he directed wheat research at the institute later known as CIMMYT, and after retiring in 1979 kept working there on triticale, barley and sorghum. He defended DDT and later genetic engineering against heavy criticism, and thought Rachel Carson's Silent Spring misjudged the pesticide even though he admired her. Only seven people have collected a Nobel Peace Prize along with both of America's highest civilian medals, and he was one. He was still at Texas A&M when he died in September 2009.
Source: Norman Borlaug
