One of the greatest men of our time, a man who saved more lives than Hitler or even Stalin destroyed, has passed away.
Borlaug solved that challenge by developing genetically unique strains of “semidwarf” wheat, and later rice, that raised food yields as much as sixfold. The result was that a country like India was able to feed its own people as its population grew from 500 million in the mid-1960s, when Borlaug’s “Green Revolution” began to take effect, to the current 1.16 billion. Today, famines—whether in Zimbabwe, Darfur or North Korea—are politically induced events, not true natural disasters.
via Norman Borlaug: The Man Who Fed the World – WSJ.com.
An in-depth story about the man by Penn & Teller.
Edit: Andrew Steele at the Globe And Mail contributes his thoughts on Borlaug’s passing.