by Norman Borlaug
1970 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
26 September 2002
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug presented his anniversary lecture at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo. An agricultural scientist, Borlaug's work in food production and hunger alleviation was recognized through the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 since, as the Laureate pointed out, there is no Nobel Prize for food and agriculture.
In his introduction, Borlaug says he often speculated that if Alfred Nobel had written his will to establish the various prizes and endowed them fifty years earlier, the first prize established would have been for food and agriculture. However, by the time Nobel wrote his will in 1895, there was no serious food production problem haunting Europe like the widespread potato famine in 1845-51, that took the lives of untold millions.
Read this timely lecture, presented here in pdf format, that explores the role of science and technology in the coming decades to improve the quantity, quality and availability of food for all of the world's population.
English, pdf 151 kB