RETURN TO LAUREATE MAINPAGE
Dr. Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan received the first World Food Prize in 1987 for spearheading the introduction of high-yielding wheat and rice varieties to India’s farmers. "The word ‘impossible' exists mainly in our minds," his father once told him, "but given the requisite will and effort, great tasks can be accomplished." In a career dedicated to alleviating human suffering, Dr. Swaminathan has completed the work of many lifetimes, and, like his mentor and colleague Dr. Norman Borlaug, he is recognized as a leader in the world’s "Green Revolution.”
M.S. Swaminathan was born in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, India, on August 7, 1925. Inspired by the example of Mahatma Gandhi, the young man was committed to serving his country and considered becoming a police officer. Winning a fellowship in 1949, he instead studied agriculture in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, earned a Ph.D. in plant genetics from Cambridge in 1952, and continued his research in the United States. Dissatisfied with the idea of living abroad as a professor, he returned to India, where scholars and leaders were actively pursuing solutions to the crisis of ballooning populations and low food production rates across Asia.
As a young scientist at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in the 1960s, Dr. Swaminathan learned of Dr. Borlaug's newly developed Mexican dwarf wheat variety and invited Dr. Borlaug to India. The two scientists worked side by side to develop wheat varieties that would yield higher levels of grain as well as develop stalk structures strong enough to support the increased biomass. In addition to this scientific breakthrough, Dr. Swaminathan also innovated new methods to teach Indian farmers how to effectively increase production with the high-yielding wheat varieties, fertilizers, and more efficient farming techniques. In 1965, he set up thousands of demonstration and test plots in the northern region of India, helping small-scale producers see that the new, genetically superior grain could thrive in their own fields; the first year’s harvest tripled previous production levels. Not only did agricultural yields improve, but scientific advances in agriculture were introduced to and used by the producers themselves. Dr. Swaminathan’s direct work with farmers overcame the obstacles of illiteracy and lack of formal education and converted a generation of Indians to a belief in the effectiveness of modern agriculture. Dr. Swaminathan’s vision transformed India from a "begging bowl" to a "breadbasket" almost overnight, bringing the total crop yield of wheat from 12 million tons to 23 million tons in four crop seasons and ending India’s reliance on grain imports. He later worked with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to establish agricultural policies and programs that would maintain long-term self-sufficiency across the country and remains the chair of the Indian government’s National Commission on Farmers.
The impact of Dr. Swaminathan’s work has reached far beyond his homeland. In 1974 he became chair of numerous prestigious international conferences, including the United Nations World Food Congress in Rome. As an advocate of scientific collaboration, he influenced renowned organizations such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, and the International Federation of Agricultural Research Systems for Development. From 1982 to 1988, he was Director General of the International Rice Research Institute, a position first held by Dr. Robert Chandler, a fellow World Food Prize Laureate.
For his outstanding achievements, Dr. Swaminathan was awarded the World Food Prize in 1987. He used the prize funds to open a research center, the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, in Chennai, India, the following year. The World Food Prize is an international award recognizing the achievements of individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world. ... Dr. Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan (born August 7, 1925) is a Indian agriculturist and heads the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation. ...With distinguished contacts on every continent, he initiated dialogue among agricultural scientists, social scientists and field workers to, in his own words, reach the unreached. The foundation’s projects collaborate with global leaders and rural citizens alike to ensure coordinated research and action in areas including protecting coastal biodiversity, promoting biotechnological approaches to micro-level farming, groundbreaking innovations in ecotechnology, new methods for community education and technical training, initiating low-cost and self-maintained programs for rural Internet access, and empowering grassroots-level food producers to take action towards increased food security and sustainable development. He currently serves as the foundation’s Chairman and also holds its UNESCO Cousteau Chair in Ecotechnology.
In 2002 Dr. Swaminathan was elected President of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Pugwash Conferences, which brings global leaders and thinkers together with the goals of reducing the danger of armed conflict and cooperatively solving global problems. He is the first citizen of a developing country to hold this post. Also in 2002, Dr. Swaminathan joined that year’s World Food Prize Laureate, Dr. Pedro Sanchez, as a Hunger Task Force coordinator for the United Nations Millennium Project, which in early 2005 developed clear targets and a practical plan for reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women in the next decade.
For his scientific brilliance, his life mission of bringing improved technology to citizens at all levels of society, his pioneering advocacy and humanitarianism, and his inspiration to thousands, Dr. Swaminathan has received over 50 honorary doctorate degrees from universities around the world and is a member of over 30 academies worldwide, including the Indian National Academy of Science and the Royal Society of London. Dr. Swaminathan has won numerous international awards such as the 1994 UNEP Sasakawa Environment Prize, the UNESCO Gandhi Gold Medal in 1999, the 1999 Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament, and Development, and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Award in 2000. Time has honored him as one of the twenty most influential Asians of the 20th century, and former United Nations Secretary General Javier Perez Cuellar has hailed him as “a living legend who will go into the annals of history as a world scientist of a rare distinction.”
TOP OF PAGE
RETURN TO LAUREATE MAINPAGE
