On Dec. 10, 1970, Norman Borlaug, from Cresco, Iowa, became the first plant breeder to accept the Nobel Prize, for his work on Green Revolution wheat varieties.

In 1944, Dr. Borlaug participated in the Rockefeller Foundation’s pioneering technical assistance program in Mexico, where he was a research scientist in charge of wheat improvement. It was on the research stations and farmers’ fields of Mexico that Dr. Borlaug developed successive generations of wheat varieties with broad and stable disease resistance, broad adaptation to growing conditions across many degrees of latitude, and with exceedingly high yield potential.