Norman E. Borlaug was born in Iowa 90 years ago. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his lifetime work to feed a hungry world, a prerequisite for peace. He is credited with saving more lives than any person who has ever lived. Although a scientist with outstanding contributions, perhaps Dr. Borlaug's greatest achievement has been his unending struggle to integrate the various streams of agricultural research into viable technologies and to bring agricultural research advances to fruition in farmers' fields.

Born and raised in Cresco, a small farming community in northeast Iowa, Borlaug is of Norwegian descent. He learned his work ethic on a small mixed crop and livestock family farm and obtained his initial education in a one-room rural school house.

His skill as an athlete, mainly in wrestling, opened the path for him to attend the University of Minnesota, where he studied to be a forester, wrestled, and worked various odd jobs. After graduation with a B.Sc. in 1937, he went to work for the U.S. Forest Service, initially in Idaho and later in Massachusetts and Connecticut. He returned to graduate school at the University of Minnesota, and took up the study of plant pathology, receiving his Ph.D. in 1942. He then worked as a Microbiologist for E.I. Dupont de Nemours, until being released from his wartime service.

In 1944, he joined the Rockefeller Foundation's pioneering technical assistance program in Mexico, where he was research scientist in charge of wheat improvement. For the next 16 years, he worked to solve a series of wheat production problems that were limiting wheat cultivation in Mexico and to help train a whole generation of young Mexico scientists.

The work in Mexico not only had a profound impact on Borlaug's life and philosophy of agricultural research and development, but also on agricultural production, first in Mexico and later in many parts of the world.

In was on the research stations and farmers' fields of Mexico that Borlaug developed successive generations of wheat varieties with broad and stable disease resistance, broad adaptation to growing conditions across many degrees of latitude, and with exceedingly high yield potential. These wheats and improved crop management practices transformed agricultural production in Mexico during the 1940s and 1950s and later in Asia and Latin America, sparking what today is known as the "Green Revolution."

By the mid-1960s, Dr. Borlaug was taking his high-yielding "Mexican" wheats and crop management technology to Asia, first to Pakistan and India, Australia, indeed anywhere that spring-habit wheats were grown. The impact has been spectacular. Over the past 40 years, wheat production in India has increased from 12 to 76 million metric tons; in Pakistan, from 4.5 to 21 million metric tons; and in the world, from 300 to 600 million metric tons.

The high-yielding wheat varieties that Norman Borlaug and his many scientific colleagues developed are today grown on more than 75 million hectares (187 million acres) throughout the world and may well be responsible for saving tend of millions of people from starvation.

Dr. Borlaug has always considered himself to be a teacher, as well as a scientist. Today, several thousand men and women agricultural scientists from more than 50 countries are proud to say they are Norman Borlaug's "students." Not only has he been a builder of individuals but he also has been a builder of institutions dedicated to the service of humankind.

With the establishment of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center(CIMMYT) in Mexico in 1966, Dr. Borlaug assumed leadership of the Wheat Program, a position he held until his "official" retirement in 1979; but where he has continued to serve as a senior consultant to this day. Since 1984, Dr. Borlaug has been the Distinguished Professor of International Agriculture at Texas A & M University, where he teaches one semester each year.

Since 1986, he has also been the President of the Sasakawa Africa Association, and leader of Sasakawa-Global 2000 agricultural program in sub-Saharan Africa, along with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, which has worked with several million farmers in 15 countries of sub -Saharan Africa to increase food production.

Dr. Borlaug has been honored by scores of governments, universities, scientific associations, farmer groups, and civic associations. He holds 50 honorary doctorate degrees and belongs to the academies of science in 12 nations. He has served on two U.S. Presidential Commissions: on Worlds Hunger (1978-79) and on Science and Technology (1990-92). He is also a member of the U.S. Wrestling Hall of Fame.

His directorships of the Population Crisis Committee and the Population Communications International reflect his long-term concern with the world population explosion and the pressure that this places on global natural resources, in the quest to feed a world that in now growing by nearly 100 million people per year.

Dr. Borlaug was also the driving force behind the establishment of the World Food Prize in 1985, which is awarded annually in recognition of outstanding human achievements in the fields of food production and nutrition, and still serves as Chairman of its Council of Advisor. Dr. Borlaug is married to the former Margaret Gibson, has a daughter, son, and five grandchildren.