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Posted 06/12/05
Honorary degree citation to Norman E. Borlaug (Doctor of Science)
Norman E. Borlaug
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You grew up on a small farm in Iowa and attended a one-room schoolhouse. The Depression and the Dust Bowl devastated that proud agrarian region - but it was a devastation that helped inspire your life's work. You studied at the University of Minnesota, where you were a champion wrestler and from which institution you received a doctorate in microbiology. After a short stint with the Dupont Company you joined the International Maize and Wheat Center, outside of Mexico City, where you began a long career of public service. Your commitment was by no means simply scientific; you helped to organize the incredibly successful Mexican Little League baseball program.
In 1970 you received the Nobel Peace Prize, one of only a handful of Americans to have been so honored, for helping to "provide bread for a hungry world." The prize particularly recognized the work you had done in developing a new strain of disease-resistant, high-yield wheat, for use in Mexico and later in India, Pakistan, and other parts of the developing world - work that would become a lifelong devotion to helping the poor and the hungry everywhere.
As a champion of new methods of agriculture and new strains of crops, you have enabled countries around the globe to feed their growing populations. And, today, you continue to focus your special efforts on raising the productivity of sub-Saharan Africa.
It is in recognition of all that you have done that Dartmouth is delighted to bestow upon you the degree Doctor of Science.
- James Wright
Return to Commencement 2005
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