25 Facts About Norman Borlaug

Norman Borlaug was born to Henry Oliver and Clara Norman Borlaug on his grandparents' farm in Saude in 1914, the first of four children.

From 1935 to 1938, before and after receiving his Bachelor of Science in forestry in 1937, Norman Borlaug worked for the United States Forest Service at stations in Massachusetts and Idaho.

Norman Borlaug earned a Master of Science degree in 1940, and a Ph.

On March 8,2007, Margaret Norman Borlaug died at the age of ninety-five, following a fall.

From 1942 to 1944, Norman Borlaug was employed as a microbiologist at DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware.

However, following the December 7,1941, attack on Pearl Harbor Norman Borlaug tried to enlist in the military, but was rejected under wartime labor regulations; his lab was converted to conduct research for the United States armed forces.

Norman Borlaug retired officially from the position in 1979, but remained a CIMMYT senior consultant.

In 1981, Norman Borlaug became a founding member of the World Cultural Council.

Besides the extra costs of doubling the work, Norman Borlaug's plan went against a then-held principle of agronomy that has since been disproved.

In 1953, Norman Borlaug extended this technique by suggesting that several pure lines with different resistance genes should be developed through backcross methods using one recurrent parent.

That year, the harvest was six times larger than in 1944, the year Norman Borlaug arrived in Mexico.

In 1965, as a response to food shortages, Norman Borlaug imported 550 tons of seeds for the government.

The initial yields of Norman Borlaug's crops were higher than any ever harvested in South Asia.

Norman Borlaug's name is nearly synonymous with the Green Revolution, against which many criticisms have been mounted over the decades by environmentalists and some nutritionists.

Norman Borlaug's work has been criticized for bringing large-scale monoculture, input-intensive farming techniques to countries that had previously relied on subsistence farming to support smaller populations.

From 1994 to 2003, Norman Borlaug served on the International Fertilizer Development Center board of directors.

In 1984, during the Ethiopian famine, Ryoichi Sasakawa, the chairman of the Japan Shipbuilding Industry Foundation, contacted the semi-retired Norman Borlaug, wondering why the methods used in Asia were not extended to Africa, and hoping Norman Borlaug could help.

From 1986 to 2009, Norman Borlaug was the President of the SAA.

Norman Borlaug's dream was to "transfer rice immunity to cereals such as wheat, maize, sorghum and barley, and transfer bread-wheat proteins to other cereals, especially rice and maize".

GM crops are as natural and safe as today's bread wheat, opined Dr Norman Borlaug, who reminded agricultural scientists of their moral obligation to stand up to the antiscience crowd and warn policy makers that global food insecurity will not disappear without this new technology and ignoring this reality global food insecurity would make future solutions all the more difficult to achieve.

Norman Borlaug died of lymphoma at the age of 95, on September 12,2009, in his Dallas home.

In 1968, Norman Borlaug received what he considered an especially satisfying tribute when the people of Ciudad Obregon, where some of his earliest experiments were undertaken, named a street after him.

Norman Borlaug was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1987.

Norman Borlaug is the subject of the documentary film The Man Who Tried to Feed the World which first aired on American Experience on April 21,2020.

Norman Borlaug was presented with the medal on July 17,2007.