When Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, the committee suggested that he’d saved one billion lives. Was he a politician? Or a military leader? Or a superhero? No, he was a fairly regular guy from Iowa who worked in agricultural research. He wasn’t a typical academic: his credentials were limited and he used techniques that had been available to the Victorians. Moreover, the innovation that made his name was rather boring – a new type of short-stem disease-resistant wheat. That wheat, however, was able to radically increase crop yield across poor countries. It helped to
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