Minnesota's unsung Nobel laureate

As Jurisdynamics has noted, it's Nobel Prize season. The roster of Nobel laureates for peace includes one figure who should be known to all readers of Agricultural Law. Indeed, he shares an institutional affiliation with two of the authors of this forum. And yet, even though this heroic figure is still alive and has a building on campus named in his honor, I would wager that a substantial majority of faculty members at the University of Minnesota would not recognize his name.

I speak, of course, of Norman E. Borlaug, the 1970 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. His accomplishment? Developing and deploying high-yield, disease-resistant cereal strains in the neediest corners of the world and thereby providing, in his words, "a temporary success in man's war against hunger and deprivation."

Norman Borlaug should be a hero and an inspiration to all of us who study and care about agriculture -- and, for that matter, to anyone who eats.