Norman Borlaug.

American Microbiologist and Agronomist
1914-

Norman E. Borlaug, perhaps the world's best-known plant breeder, was born on a small farm near Cresco, Iowa, in 1914. He studied plant pathology at the University of Minnesota.

In October 1944 Borlaug began work with the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico. The foundation had begun a new program in Mexico in 1943 aimed at increasing the agricultural yields of the country. Borlaug's primary scientific achievements were as an applied wheat geneticist with the foundation. He oversaw a highly successful use of Mendelian genetics to create new varieties of wheat.

His work involved the identification of parent varieties with useful traits, such as disease resistance and high yield. He then dusted pollen (male reproductive cells) from the flowers of one variety onto flowers from another variety, from which the stamen had been removed. The transferred pollen cells fertilized the ovules (female...