Norman Borlaug, the Iowa farm boy who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his efforts to feed the world's hungry, died Saturday night at his home in Dallas, Texas. He was 95.
Borlaug died just before 11 p.m. from complications of cancer, Kathleen Phillips, a Texas A&M University spokeswoman, told the Associated Press. Phillips said Borlaug's granddaughter told her about his death. Borlaug was a distinguished professor at the university in College Station.
A self-described "corn-fed, country-bred Iowa boy," Borlaug was called "the Father of the Green Revolution" for his work developing high-yielding strains of wheat that were credited with staving off the starvation of millions of people in Pakistan and India in the 1960s.
It has been said that Borlaug saved more lives than any other person in history, said Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation, which Borlaug founded in 1986.
Borlaug, hailed by U.S. and world leaders over the past four decades, was one of five people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. The others: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Elie Wiesel and Nelson Mandela.
"Thanks to Dr. Borlaug's pioneering work to develop varieties of high-yielding wheat, countless millions of men, women and children, who will never know his name, will never go to bed hungry," former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said in 2007 when Borlaug received the Congressional Gold Medal.
"Dr. Borlaug's scientific breakthroughs have eased needless suffering and saved countless lives (and) have been an inspiration to new generations across the globe who have taken up the fight against hunger."
Borlaug had suffered from lymphoma and other ailments that had caused him to be in and out of the hospital in recent years, Quinn said.
Yet Borlaug maintained an ambitious travel schedule into his 90s, continuing to teach at Texas A&M and work for the International Center for the Improvement of Wheat and Maize, where he did his breeding work that led to the Nobel Peace Prize.
When it was announced in 1970 that Borlaug had won the Nobel Peace Prize, he was working in experimental fields 50 miles from Mexico City.
At first, Borlaug thought the report that he had won the Nobel was a joke, and he had to be persuaded to return to the city for a news conference. When he arrived, he was wearing his work clothes, with dust on his shoes and dirt on his hands.
"I wanted to show the TV men what makes an agricultural scientist -- dirty hands," he said. "I washed them later."
I guess my other local fishwrapper, the Iowa City Press-Citizen, is so busy high-fiving over UI's win yesterday that they can't give Dr. Borlaug his due. RIP, sir. 
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