Father of the Green Revolution

It's easy to conjure up the names of the notorious who've been responsible for the deaths of millions -- think Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot -- but what about the name of a man responsible for saving millions? As writer Gregg Easterbrook noted in 1997, "America has three living winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, two universally renowned and the other so little celebrated that not one person in a hundred would be likely to pick his face out of a lineup, or even recognize his name." The famous Nobel laureates were Elie Wiesel and Henry Kissinger. The relative unknown was Norman Borlaug.

Borlaug, who died in Dallas Saturday night at age 95, was an agronomist whose discoveries sparked the Green Revolution and who by showing developing nations how to increase food production saved literally millions of lives from starvation. Easterbrook argued that he saved more lives than any person who ever lived.

In recent years he was a professor at Texas A&M University and continued writing and advising students until shortly before his death. He didn't become any better known than he was a dozen years ago, at least in this country, although in developing nations around the world he was considered one of the most significant Americans of our time..