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Norman Borlaug, a U of M alumnus, won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his research into increasing food production in Third World countries. (Photo courtesy Norman Borlaug University)

University of Minnesota alumnus Norman Borlaug, the father of the "Green Revolution," won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to increase food production in Third World countries. One observer credits him with saving more lives than anyone who has ever lived.

Borlaug, a native of Cresco, Iowa, earned degrees in forestry and plant pathology at the U in the late 1930s and early '40s. In 1943, Borlaug began working for the Rockefeller Center. He was sent to Mexico and began researching new strains of wheat which could thrive in a wide variety of conditions and yield more grain per acre. Borlaug and his colleagues developed various dwarf varieties of wheat - which could withstand higher levels of fertilizer, were more resistant to disease, and produced double the yield per acre. These wheat varieties were introduced in India and Pakistan in the 1960s, and many other countries in later years.

The development of high-yield wheat meant these countries could produce enough food to feed their growing populations. Borlaug's research came at a time when many were predicting massive food shortages in Third World countries would lead to mass starvation.

The Nobel Prize committee awarded Borlaug the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize, saying that his efforts to feed hungry people led to greater stability in those countries, and ultimately created the possibility for a peaceful future for all the world.

The Nobel committee expressed Borlaug's contribution this way:

"This will be the responsibility and challenge to be faced by the political authorities in the countries concerned. Through his scientific contribution and his tremendous talent for organization, Dr. Borlaug has introduced a dynamic factor into our assessment of the future and its potential. He has enlarged our perspective; he has given the economists, the social planners, and the politicians a few decades in which to solve their problems, to introduce the family planning, the economic equalization, the social security, and the political liberty we must have in order to ensure everybody - not least the impoverished, undernourished and malnourished masses - their daily bread and thus a peaceful future. And this is precisely where Dr. Borlaug has made his great contribution to peace."