In English, the word laureate has come to signify eminence or association with literary or military glory. It is also used for winners of the Nobel Prize.

History

In ancient Greece, the laurel (''Laurus nobilis'') was sacred to Apollo and as such sprigs of it were fashioned into a crown or wreath of honor for poets and heroes. This symbolism has been widespread ever since. "Laureate letters" in old times meant the dispatches announcing a victory; and the epithet was given, even officially (e.g. to John Skelton) by universities, to distinguished poets.

The name of "bacca-laureate" for a bachelor's degree shows a confusion with a supposed etymology from Latin bacca lauri (the laurel berry), which, though incorrect, involves the same idea. From the more general use of the term "poet laureate" arose its restriction in England to the office of the poet attached to the royal household, first held by Ben Jonson, for whom the position was, in its essentials, created by Charles I of England in 1617. Jonson's appointment does not seem to have been formally made as poet-laureate, but his position was equivalent to that. The office was a development of the practice of earlier times, when minstrels and versifiers were part of the retinue of the King; it is recorded that Richard the Lionheart had a versificator regis (Gulielmus Peregrinus), and Henry III of England had a versificator (Master Henry); in the 15th century John Kay, also a "versifier", described himself as Edward IV of England's "humble poet laureate". Moreover, the crown had shown its patronage in various ways; Chaucer had been given a pension and a perquisite of wine by Edward III of England, and Spenser a pension by Queen Elizabeth I. W. Hamilton classes Chaucer, Gower, John Kay, Andrew Bernard, John Skelton, Robert Whittington, Richard Edwards, Spenser and Samuel Daniel, as "volunteer Laureates".

Poet Laureate

Sir William Davenant succeeded Jonson in 1638, and the title of poet laureate was conferred by letters patent on John Dryden in 1670 two years after Davenant's death, coupled with a pension of £300 and a butt of Canary Islands wine. The post then became a regular institution, though the emoluments varied, Dryden's successors being T. Shadwell, who originated annual birthday and New Year odes, Nahum Tate, Nicholas Rowe, Laurence Eusden, Colley Cibber, William Whitehead, Thomas Warton, Henry James Pye, Robert Southey, William Wordsworth, Alfred Tennyson and, four years after Tennyson's death, Alfred Austin. The office took on a new luster from the personal distinction of Southey, Wordsworth and Tennyson; it had fallen into contempt before Southey, and on Tennyson's death there was a considerable feeling that no possible successor was acceptable, William Morris and Algernon Charles Swinburne being hardly court poets. Eventually, however, the undesirability of breaking with tradition for temporary reasons, and thus severing the one official link between literature and the state, prevailed over the protests against following Tennyson by any one of inferior genius. It may be noted that abolition was similarly advocated when Thomas Warton and William Wordsworth died. The poet laureate, being a court official, was considered responsible for producing formal and appropriate verses on birthdays and state occasions; but his activity in this respect has varied, according to circumstances, and the custom ceased to be obligatory after Pye's death. Wordsworth stipulated, before accepting the honor, that no formal effusions from him should be considered a necessity; but Tennyson was generally happy in his numerous poems of this class. The emoluments of the post have varied; Ben Jonson first received a pension of 100 marks, and later an annual "terse of Canary wine". To Pye an allowance of £27 was made instead of the wine. Tennyson drew £72 a year from the Lord Chamberlain's department, and £27 from the Lord Steward's in lieu of the "butt of sack".

See also

Laurel wreath

Category:Titles

af:Laureaat de:Laureat et:Laureaat io:Laureato kk:Лауреат ru:Лауреат sh:Laureat uk:Лауреат zh:桂冠 (荣誉)

name	Liu Xiaobo
birth date	December 28, 1955
birth place	Changchun, Jilin, People's Republic of China
death date
occupation	Writer, political commentator, human rights activist
awards
alma mater	Jilin University (吉林大学)Beijing Normal University
spouse	Liu Xia
nationality	Chinese }}

Liu Xiaobo ( pronunciation: ; born 28 December 1955) is a Chinese literary critic, writer, professor, and human rights activist who called for political reforms and the end of communist one-party rule in the People's Republic of China (PRC). He is currently incarcerated as a political prisoner in the PRC.

Liu has served from 2003 to 2007 as President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, an organization funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, an organization almost entirely funded by the US Congress. He was also the President of NED-funded ''MinZhuZhongGuo'' (''Democratic China'') magazine since the mid-1990s. On 8 December 2008, Liu was detained in response to his participation with the Charter 08 manifesto. He was formally arrested on 23 June 2009, on suspicion of "inciting subversion of state power." He was tried on the same charges on 23 December 2009, and sentenced to eleven years' imprisonment and two years' deprivation of political rights on 25 December 2009.

During his fourth prison term, he was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, for "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China." He is the first Chinese citizen to be awarded a Nobel Prize of any kind while residing in China. Liu is the third person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while in prison or detention, after Germany's Carl von Ossietzky (1935) and Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi (1991). Liu is also the first person since Ossietzky to be denied the right to have a representative collect the Nobel prize for him.

Early life and works

Liu was born in Changchun, Jilin, in 1955 to an intellectual family. In 1969, during the Down to the Countryside Movement, he was taken by his father to the Horqin Right Front Banner of Inner Mongolia. After he finished middle school in 1974, he was sent to the countryside to work on a farm in Jilin province.

In 1977, Liu was admitted to the Department of Chinese literature at Jilin University. While at Jilin, he created a poetry group known as The Innocent Hearts (Chi Zi Xin) with six of his schoolmates. In 1982, he graduated with B.A. in literature and then admitted as a research student at the Department of Chinese Literature at Beijing Normal University. In 1984, he received an M.A. in literature and became a teacher at the same department. That year, he married Tao Li. His son Liu Tao was born the next year.

In 1986, Liu started his doctoral study program and published his literary critiques at various magazines. He became well known as a "dark horse" for his radical opinions and sharp comments on the official doctrines and establishments to shock both of the literary and ideological circles, thus termed as Liu Xiaobo Shock or Liu Xiaobo Phenomenon. In 1987, his first book, ''Criticism of the Choice: Dialogues with Li Zehou'', was published. This work became a bestseller non-fiction. It comprehensively criticised the Chinese tradition of Confucianism and posed a frank challenge to Li Zehou, a rising ideological star who had a strong influence on young intellectuals in China at the time.

In June 1988, he received Ph.D. in literature. His doctoral thesis, Aesthetic and Human Freedom passed the examination unanimously and was published as his second book.

In the same year he became a lecturer at the same department. He soon became a visiting scholar at several universities, including the University of Oslo, the University of Hawaii, and Columbia University. He returned home as the student movement broke out in Beijing in 1989. This year saw also the publication of his third book, ''The Fog of Metaphysics'', a comprehensive review on Western philosophies. Soon, all of his works were banned.

Political views

In a 1988 interview with Hong Kong's ''Liberation Monthly'' (now known as ''Open Magazine''), Liu was asked what it would take for China to realize a true historical transformation. He replied:

(It would take) 300 years of colonialism. In 100 years of colonialism, Hong Kong has changed to what we see today. With China being so big, of course it would require 300 years as a colony for it to be able to transform into how Hong Kong is today. I have my doubts as to whether 300 years would be enough."

Liu admitted in 2006 that the response was extemporaneous, although he did not intend to take it back,as it represented "an extreme expression of his longheld belief". The quote was nonetheless used against him. He has commented, "Even today [in 2006], radical patriotic 'angry youth' still frequently use these words to paint me with 'treason."

Known for his pro-West stance, Liu once stated in an interview: "Modernization means whole-sale westernization, choosing a human life is choosing Western way of life. Difference between Western and Chinese governing system is humane vs in-humane, there's no middle ground... Westernization is not a choice of a nation, but a choice for the human race"

During the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests he was in the United States but decided to go back to China to join the movement. He was later named as one of the "Four junzis of Tiananmen Square" for persuading students to leave the square saving hundreds of lives.

In his 1996 article titled "Lessons from the Cold War", Liu argues that "The free world led by the US fought almost all regimes that trampled on human rights … The major wars that the US became involved in are all ethically defensible." He has defended U.S. policies in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which he thinks is the fault of the "provocateur" Palestinians.

Liu also published a 2004 article in support of Bush's war on Iraq, titled "Victory to the Anglo-American Freedom Alliance", in which he praised the U.S. led post-cold-war wars as "best examples of how war should be conducted in a modern civilization." and predicted "a free, democratic and peaceful Iraq will emerge." During the 2004 US presidential election, Liu again praised Bush for his war effort against Iraq and condemned Democratic party candidate John Kerry for not sufficiently supporting the US's wars. Meanwhile, he commented on Islamism that, "a cul­ture and (reli­gious) sys­tem that pro­duced this kind of threat (Islamic fundamentalism), must be extremely intol­er­ant and blood-thirsty.” On Israel, he said "with­out America’s pro­tec­tion, the long per­se­cuted Jews who faced exter­mi­na­tion dur­ing World War II, prob­a­bly would again be drowned by the Islamic world's hatred.

Human rights activities

Liu Xiaobo is one of best known human rights activists in China.

On 27 April 1989, Dr. Liu Xiaobo returned home in Beijing and immediately took part in the popular movement to support the student protests. When bloodshed was likely near to happen for the students persistently occupying the Tiananmen (TAM) Square to challenge the government and army enforcing the martial law, he initiated a four men's 3-day hunger strike on 2 June, later referred to as the Tiananmen Four Gentlemen Hunger Strike, to earn the trust from the students, and published a joint statement, June 2 Hunger Strike Declaration. He called on both the government and the students to abandon the ideology of class struggle and to adopt a new kind of political culture for dialogue and compromise. Although it was too late to prevent the massacre from occurring beyond the TAM Square starting from the night of 3 June, he and his colleagues succeeded to negotiate with both of the student leaders and the army commander to let the several thousand students withdraw peacefully and completely from the Square, thus avoiding a possible bloodshed in much larger scale.

On 6 June, Dr. Liu was arrested for his alleged role in the movement, detained in Qincheng Prison, and 3 months later expelled from his university. The governmental media issued numerous publications to condemn him as a “mad dog” and “black hand” to have incited and manipulated the student movement to overthrow the government and socialist. All of his publications were banned, including his fourth book in press, Going Naked Toward God. In Taiwan however, his first and third books were republished with some additions as Criticism of the Choice: Dialogues with Leading Thinker LI Zehou (1989), and Mysteries of Thought and Dreams of Mankind (2 volumes, 1990).

In January 1991, 19 months since his arrest, Dr. Liu Xiaobo was convicted on the offence of "counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement" but exempted from criminal punishment for his “major meritorious action” for having avoided the possibly bloody confrontation at Tiananmen Square. After his release, he was divorced and eventually his ex-wife and son immigrated to the USA. He resumed his writing, mostly on human rights and political issues though he has not been allowed to publish in mainland China. In 1992, he published in Taiwan his first book after his imprisonment, The Monologues of a Doomsday’s Survivor, a controversial memoir with his confessions and political criticism on the popular movement in 1989.

In January 1993, Dr. Liu was invited to visit Australia and the USA for the interviews in a documentary film, Gate of Heavenly Peace. Although many of his friends suggested him to take refuge abroad, he returned China in May of the same year and continued his freelance writing.

On 18 May 1995, the police took Dr. Liu into custody for launching a petition campaign on the eve of the sixth anniversary of June 4 massacre, calling on the government to reassess the event and to initiate political reform. He was held under residential surveillance in the suburbs of Beijing for 9 months. He was released in February 1996 but arrested again on 8 October for an October Tenth Declaration, co-authored by him and another prominent dissident Wang Xizhe, mainly on Taiwan issue that advocated the peaceful unification to oppose Chinese Communist Party's forceful treats toward the island. He was ordered to serve three years of re-education through labor on "disturbing public order” for that statement. In the same year, he married Liu Xia.

After his release on 7 October 1999, Dr. Liu Xiaobo resumed his freelance writing. However, it is reported that the government built a sentry station next to his home and his phone calls and internet connections were tapped.

In 2000, he published 3 different books in three different Chinese territories, in Taiwan A Nation That Lies to Conscience, a 400-paged political criticism; in Hong Kong Selection of Poems by Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia, a 450-paged collection of the poems as correspondences between him and his wife during his imprisonment; and in Mainland The Beauty Offers Me Drug: Literary Dialogues between Wang Shuo and Lao Xia, a 250-paged collection of literary critiques co-authored by a popular young writer and by him under his unknown penname of Lao Xiao. In the same year, Dr. Liu participated in founding the Independent Chinese PEN Centre and was elected to its Board of Directors as well as its President in November 2003, re-elected two years later. In 2007, he did not seek for the re-election of the president but hold his position of the board member until detained by the police in December 2008.

In 2004 when he started to write a Human Rights Report of China at home, his computer, letters and documents were confiscated by the government. He once said, "at Liu Xia (Liu's wife)'s birthday, her best friend brought two bottles of wine to (my home) but was blocked by the police from coming in. I ordered a [birthday] cake and the police also rejected the man who delivered the cake to us. I quarreled with them and the police said, "it is for the sake of your security. It has happened many bomb attacks in these days." Those measures were loosened until 2007, when the Olympic Games were going to be held in China.

In January 2005, following the death of former Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang, who showed sympathy to protesters of the student demonstration in 1989, Liu was immediately put under house arrest for two weeks before realizing the death of Zhao. In the same year, he published two more books in the USA, Future of Free China Exists in Civil Society, and Single-Blade Poisonous Sword: Criticism of Chinese Nationalism.

His writing is considered subversive by the Chinese Communist Party, and his name is censored. He has called for multi-party elections, free markets, advocated values of freedom, supported separation of powers and urged the governments to be accountable for its wrongdoings. When not in prison, he has been the subject of government monitoring and put under house arrest during ''sensitive times''.

Liu's human rights work has received international recognition. In 2004, Reporters Without Borders awarded him the Fondation de France Prize as a defender of press freedom.

{|class="wikitable" |+Prison terms for Liu Xiaobo |- !Prison term || Reason ||Result |- |June 1989 – January 1991 || Charged with spreading messages to instigate counterrevolutionary behavior. || Imprisoned in one of China's best-known maximum security prisons, Qincheng Prison, and discharged when he signed a "letter of repentance." |- |May 1995 – January 1996 || Being involved in democracy and human rights movement and voicing publicly the need to redress government's wrongdoings in the student protest of 1989 || Released after being jailed for six months. |- |October 1996 – October 1999 || Charged with disturbing the social order || Jailed in a labor education camp for three years. In 1996, he married Liu Xia. |- |December 2009–2020 || Charged with spreading a message to subvert the country and authority ||Sentenced for 11 years and deprived of all political rights for two years. Currently imprisoned in Jinzhou Prison in Liaoning Province. |}

''Charter 08'', arrest and trial

Conception and diffusion of the Charter

Liu Xiaobo actively participated in the writing of Charter 08. Then, along with more than three hundred Chinese citizens, he signed ''Charter 08'', a manifesto released on the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (10 December 2008), written in the style of the Czechoslovak Charter 77 calling for more freedom of expression, human rights, more democratic elections, for privatizing state enterprises and land and for economic liberalism. As of September 2010, the Charter has collected over 10,000 signatures.

Arrest

Late in the evening of 8 December 2008, two days before the official release of the Charter, Liu Xiaobo was taken away from his home by police. Another scholar and Charter 08 signatory, Zhang Zuhua, was also taken away by police at that time. According to Zhang, the two were detained on suspicion of gathering signatures to the Charter. While Liu was detained, in solitary confinement, he was not allowed to meet with his lawyer or family, though he was allowed to eat lunch with his wife, Liu Xia, and two policemen on New Year's Day 2009. On 23 June 2009, the Beijing procuratorate approved Liu Xiaobo's arrest on charges of "suspicion of inciting subversion of state power," a crime under article 105 of China's Criminal Law. In a Xinhua news release announcing Liu's arrest, the Beijing Public Security Bureau alleged that Liu had incited the subversion of state power and the overturn of the socialist system through methods such as spreading rumors and slander, citing almost verbatim Article 105; the Beijing PSB also noted that Liu had "fully confessed."

Trial

On 1 December 2009, Beijing police transferred Liu's case to the procuratorate for investigation and processing; on 10 December, the procuratorate formally indicted Liu on charges of "inciting subversion of state power" under and sent his lawyers, Shang Baojun and Ding Xikui, the indictment document. He was tried at Beijing No. 1 Intermediate Court on 23 December 2009. His wife was not permitted to observe the hearing, although his brother-in-law was present. Diplomats from more than a dozen states – including the U.S., Britain, Canada, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand – were denied access to the court to watch the trial and stood outside the court for its duration. Amongst these included Gregory May, political officer at the U.S. Embassy, and Nicholas Weeks, first secretary of the Swedish Embassy.

This statement, titled "I have no enemies", was later read in the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, which Liu Xiaobo was unable to attend due to imprisonment. On 25 December 2009, Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to eleven years' imprisonment and two years' deprivation of political rights by the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate Court on charges of "inciting subversion of state power." According to Liu's family and counsel, he plans to appeal the judgment. In the verdict, Charter 08 was named as part of the evidence supporting his conviction. John Pomfret of ''The Washington Post'' said Christmas Day was chosen to dump the news because the Chinese government believed Westerners were less likely to take notice on a holiday. In an article published in the ''South China Morning Post'', Liu argued that his verdict violated China's constitution, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations. He argued that charges against him of 'spreading rumours, slandering and in other ways inciting the subversion of the government and overturning the socialist system' were contrived, as he did not fabricate or create false information, nor did he besmirch the good name and character of others by merely expressing a point of view, a value judgment.

International response

Following Liu's detention, a number of individuals, states and organizations across the world called for his immediate release. On 11 December 2008, the U.S. Department of State called for Liu's release; on 22 December 2008, a consortium of scholars, writers, lawyers and human rights advocates called for Liu's release in an open letter; and on 21 January 2009, 300 international writers, including Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Ha Jin and Jung Chang, called for Liu's release in a statement put out through PEN. In March 2009 Liu Xiaobo was awarded with the Homo Homini Award by the One World Film Festival, organized by the People in Need foundation, for promoting freedom of speech, democratic principles and human rights.

In December 2009, the European Union and United States both issued formal appeals calling for the unconditional release of Liu Xiaobo.

China, responding to the international calls prior to the verdict, stated that other nations should "respect China's judicial sovereignty and to not do things that will interfere in China's internal affairs."

Responding to the verdict, United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Navanethem Pillay expressed concern at the deterioration of political rights in China. German Chancellor Angela Merkel strongly criticized the verdict, stating "despite the great progress in other areas in the expression of views, I regret that the Chinese government still massively restricts press freedom." Canada and Switzerland also condemned the verdict. In Taiwan, Republic of China President Ma Ying-jeou called on Beijing to "tolerate dissent". On 6 January 2010, former Czech president Václav Havel joined with other communist-era dissidents at the Chinese embassy in Prague to present a petition calling for Liu's release. On 22 January 2010, European Association for Chinese Studies sent an open letter to Hu Jintao on behalf of over 800 scholars from 36 countries calling for Liu's release.

On 18 January 2010, Liu was nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize by Václav Havel, the 14th Dalai Lama, André Glucksmann, Vartan Gregorian, Mike Moore, Karel Schwarzenberg, Desmond Tutu and Grigory Yavlinsky. China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ma Zhaoxu stated that awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu would be "totally wrong". Geir Lundestad, a secretary of the Nobel Committee, stated the award would not be influenced by Beijing's opposition. On 25 September 2010, ''The New York Times'' reported that a petition in support of the Nobel nomination was being circulated in China.

On 14 September 2010, Jón Gnarr, the mayor of Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland, met on an unrelated matter with CPC Politburo member Liu Qi and demanded China set the dissident Liu Xiaobo free. Also that September Václav Havel, Dana Němcová and Václav Malý, leaders of Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, published an open letter in ''The International Herald Tribune'' calling for the award to be given to Liu, while a petition began to circulate soon afterwards.

On 6 October 2010, the non-governmental organization Freedom Now, which serves as international counsel to Liu Xiaobo as retained by his family, publicly released a letter from 30 U.S. Members of Congress to President Barack Obama (the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate), urging him to directly raise both Liu Xiaobo's case and that of fellow imprisoned dissident Gao Zhisheng to Chinese President Hu Jintao at the G-20 Summit in November 2010. Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jiu congratulated Liu Xiaobo on winning the Nobel Prize and request Mainland Chinese authorities to improve their impression to the world about human rights, but not calling for his release from prison.

In 2011 the WorldWideReading is dedicated to Liu Xiaobo. On March 20 there will be readings in more than 60 towns and cities on all continents and broadcast via radio stations. The appeal 'Freedom for Liu Xiaobo' has so far been supported by more than 700 writers from around the world, amongst them the Nobel Prize laureates John M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Herta Müller and Elfriede Jelinek, as well as Breyten Breytenbach, Eliot Weinberger, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Mario Vargas Llosa, Wolf Biermann and Dave Eggers.

Nobel Peace Prize

On 8 October 2010 the Nobel Committee awarded Liu the Prize "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China", saying that Liu had long been front-runner as the recipient of the prize.

All news about the announcement of the award was immediately censored in China at the time of the announcement though later that day became available. Foreign news broadcasters including CNN and the BBC were immediately blocked; heavy censorship was applied to personal communications. The Chinese Foreign Ministry statement denounced the award to Liu Xiaobo, saying that it "runs completely counter to the principle of the award and is also a desecration of the Peace Prize." The Norwegian ambassador to the People's Republic of China was summoned by the Foreign Ministry on 8 October 2010 and was presented with an official complaint against the granting of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu. The Chinese government has called Liu Xiaobo a criminal and stated that he doesn't deserve the prize. Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng criticized Liu by calling him "the accomplice of the Communist regime".

Following the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize, celebrations in China were either stopped or curtailed; prominent intellectuals and other dissidents were detained, harassed or put under surveillance; Liu's wife, Liu Xia, was placed under house arrest. She was not allowed to talk to reporters even though no official charges were brought. 65 foreign countries with missions in Norway were all invited to the Nobel Prize ceremony; of these 15 declined, in some cases due to heavy lobbying by China. Those countries were China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Egypt, Sudan, Cuba and Morocco.

China also imposed travel restrictions on known dissidents ahead of the ceremony. A Chinese group announced that its answer to the Nobel Peace Prize, the Confucius Peace Prize, would be awarded to former Taiwan vice-president Lien Chan for the bridge of peace he has been building between Taiwan and the mainland. Lien Chan himself denied any knowledge of the $15,000 prize.

Major publications

Awards and Honors

Hellman-Hammett Grant (1990, 1996)

China Foundation on Democracy Education for Outstanding Democratic Activist(2003)

Fondation de France Prize for defender of press freedom (2004)

Hong Kong Human Rights Press Awards (2004, 2005, 2006)

:*Excellent Award (2004) for an article ''Corrupted News is not News'', published on Open Magazine , January 2004 issue :*Grand Prize (2005) for an article ''Paradise of the Powerful, Hell of the Vulnerable'' on Open Magazine, September 2004 issue :*Excellent Award (2006) for ''The Causes and Ending of Shanwei Bloodshed'' on Open Magazine, January 2006

Asia-Pacific Human Rights Foundation (Australia) Courage of Conscience Award (2007)

People In Need (Czech) Homo Homini Award (2009) PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award (2009)

Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars (USA) Free Spirit Award (2009)

German PEN Hermann Kesten Medal (2010) Nobel Peace Prize (2010)

Honorary member of German, American, Portuguese, Czech and Sydney PEN Centers, and Honorary President of Independent Chinese PEN Centre.

See also

Shirin Ebadi

Human rights in the People's Republic of China

List of Chinese dissidents

Weiquan movement

Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China

Blocking of Wikipedia by the People's Republic of China

Internet freedom

Freedom of the press

References

External links

Collection of news articles about Liu Xiaobo, via ''China Digital Times''

English language articles and interviews

Film Excerpts of Liu Xiaobo from ''The Gate of Heavenly Peace''

Nobel Peace Prize: Another Exercise in Political Cynicism

The Poet in an Unknown Prison letter by Liu from ''The New York Review of Books''

Unofficial English translation of Liu Xiaobo's 2009 criminal verdict

"Further Questions about Child Slavery in China's Kilns" - the Chinese court supporting Liu Xiaobo's subversion conviction

Jailed Chinese Dissident Liu Xiaobo Awarded Nobel Peace Prize - video report by ''Democracy Now!''

Barry Sautman & Yan Hairong (15 December 2010). "Do supporters of Nobel winner Liu Xiaobo really know what he stands for?", ''The Guardian''

Category:1955 births Category:Charter 08 signatories Category:Chinese democracy activists Category:Chinese anti-communists Category:Chinese dissidents Category:Chinese activists Category:Chinese human rights activists Category:Chinese Nobel laureates Category:Chinese writers Category:People's Republic of China poets Category:Living people Category:Nobel Peace Prize laureates Category:International PEN Category:People from Changchun Category:Prisoners and detainees of the People's Republic of China Category:Jilin University alumni Category:Beijing Normal University alumni

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Name	Round Table
Source	Arthurian legend
First	Roman de Brut
Creator	Wace
Type	Fictional table
Genre	Fantasy
Owner	King Arthur

The Round Table is King Arthur's famed table in the Arthurian legend, around which he and his Knights congregate. As its name suggests, it has no head, implying that everyone who sits there has equal status. The table was first described in 1155 by Wace, who relied on previous depictions of Arthur's fabulous retinue. The symbolism of the Round Table developed over time; by the close of the 12th century it had come to represent the chivalric order associated with Arthur's court, the Knights of the Round Table.

History

The Round Table first appears in Wace's ''Roman de Brut'', a Norman language adaptation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's ''Historia Regum Britanniae'' finished in 1155. Wace says Arthur created the Round Table to prevent quarrels among his barons, none of whom would accept a lower place than the others. Layamon added to the story when he adapted Wace's work into the Middle English ''Brut'' in the early 13th century, saying that the quarrel between Arthur's vassals led to violence at a Yuletide feast. In response a Cornish carpenter built an enormous but easily transportable Round Table to prevent further dispute. Wace claims he was not the source of the Round Table; both he and Layamon credit it instead to the Bretons. Some scholars have doubted this claim, while others believe it may be true. There is some similarity between the chroniclers' description of the Round Table and a custom recorded in Celtic stories, in which warriors sit in a circle around the king or lead warrior, in some cases feuding over the order of precedence as in Layamon. There is a possibility that Wace, contrary to his own claims, derived Arthur's round table not from any Breton source, but rather from medieval biographies of Charlemagne - notably Einhard's ''Vita Caroli'' and Notker the Stammerer's ''De Carolo Magno'' - in which the king is said to have possessed a round table decorated with a map of Rome.

Though the Round Table itself is not mentioned until Wace the concept of Arthur having a marvelous court made up of many prominent warriors is much older. Geoffrey of Monmouth says that after establishing peace throughout Britain Arthur "increased his personal entourage by inviting very distinguished men from far-distant kingdoms to join it." The code of chivalry so important in later romance figures in as well, as Geoffrey says Arthur established "such a code of courtliness in his household that he inspired peoples living far away to imitate him." Long before Geoffrey, Arthur's court was well known to Welsh storytellers; in the romance ''Culhwch and Olwen'', written around 1100, the protagonist Culhwch invokes the names of 225 individuals affiliated with Arthur. In fact, the fame of Arthur's entourage became so prominent in Welsh tradition that in the later additions to the Welsh Triads, the formula "Arthur's Court" in the titles of the triads began to supersede the older "Island of Britain" formula. Though the code of chivalry crucial to later continental romances dealing with the Round Table is mostly absent from the earlier Welsh material, some passages of ''Culhwch and Olwen'' seem to prefigure it, for instance when Arthur explains the ethos of his court, saying "[w]e are nobles as long as we are sought out: the greater the bounty we may give, the greater our nobility, fame and honour."

Though no Round Table appears in the early Welsh texts, Arthur is associated with various items of household furniture. The earliest of these is Saint Carannog's mystical floating altar in that saint's 12th century ''Vita''; in the story Arthur has found the altar and attempts unsuccessfully to use it for a table, and returns it to Carannog in exchange for the saint ridding the land of a meddlesome dragon. Arthur's household furniture figures into local topographical folklore throughout Britain as early as the early 12th century, with various landmarks being named "Arthur's Seat", "Arthur's Oven," and "Arthur's Bed-chamber." A henge at Eamont Bridge near Penrith, Cumbria is known as "King Arthur's Round Table". The still-visible Roman amphitheatre at Caerleon has been associated with the Round Table and has been suggested as a possible source for the legend.

In 2010, following archaeological discoveries at the Roman ruins in Chester, some writers suggested that the Chester Roman Amphitheatre was the true prototype of the Round Table but English Heritage, acting as consultants to a History Channel documentary in which the claim was made, declared that there was no archaeological basis to the story.

Later development

The Round Table takes on new dimensions in the romances of the late 12th and early 13th century, where it becomes a symbol of the famed order of chivalry which flourishes under Arthur. In Robert de Boron's ''Merlin'', written around the 1190s, the wizard Merlin creates the Round Table in imitation of the table of the Last Supper and of Joseph of Arimathea's Holy Grail table. This table, here made for Arthur's father Uther Pendragon rather than Arthur himself, has twelve seats and one empty place to mark the betrayal of Judas. This seat must remain empty until the coming of the knight who will achieve the Grail. The Didot ''Perceval'', a prose continuation of Robert's work, takes up the story, and the knight Percival sits in the seat and initiates the Grail quest.

The prose cycles of the 13th century, the Lancelot-Grail cycle and the Post-Vulgate Cycle, further adapt the chivalric attributes of the Round Table. Here it is the perfect knight Galahad, rather than Percival, who assumes the empty seat, now called the Siege Perilous. Galahad's arrival marks the start of the Grail quest as well as the end of the Arthurian era. In these works the Round Table is kept by King Leodegrance of Cameliard after Uther's death; Arthur inherits it when he marries Leodegrance's daughter Guinevere. Other versions treat the Round Table differently, for instance Italian Arthurian works often distinguish between the "Old Table" of Uther's time and Arthur's "New Table."

Round Table tournaments

During the Middle Ages festivals called Round Tables were celebrated throughout Europe in imitation of Arthur's court. These events featured jousting, dancing, and feasting, and in some cases attending knights assumed the identities of Arthur's knights. The earliest of these was held in Cyprus in 1223 to celebrate a knighting. Round Tables were popular in various European countries through the rest of the Middle Ages and were at times very elaborate; René of Anjou even erected an Arthurian castle for his 1446 Round Table.

The artifact known as the "Winchester Round Table," a large tabletop hanging in Winchester Castle bearing the names of various knights of Arthur's court, was probably created for a Round Table tournament. The current paintwork is late; it was done by order of Henry VIII of England for Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's 1522 state visit, and depicts Henry himself sitting in Arthur's seat above a Tudor rose. The table itself is considerably older; dendrochronology calculates the date of construction to 1250–1280—during the reign of Edward I—using timber from store felled over a period of years. Edward was an Arthurian enthusiast who attended at least five Round Tables and hosted one himself in 1299, which may have been the occasion for the creation of the Winchester Round Table. Martin Biddle, from an examination of Edward's financial accounts, links it instead with a tournament Edward held near Winchester on April 20, 1290, to mark the betrothal of one of his daughters.

Notes

References

Bromwich, Rachel (2006). ''Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Triads of the Island of Britain''. University Of Wales Press. ISBN 0-7083-1386-8.

Geoffrey of Monmouth; Thorpe, Lewis (1988). ''The History of the Kings of Britain''. New York: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-044170-0.

Lacy, Norris J. (Ed.) (1991). ''The New Arthurian Encyclopedia''. New York: Garland. ISBN 0-8240-4377-4.

Loomis, Roger S. (1959). "Arthurian Influence on Sport and Spectacle."

''Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages''. Oxford.

Padel, O. J. (2000). ''Arthur in Medieval Welsh Literature''. University of Wales Press. ISBN 0-7083-7689-1.

Rouse, Robert; and Cory Rushton (2005). ''The Medieval Quest for Arthur''. Tempus, Stroud. ISBN 0-7524-3343-1.

External links

Timeless Myths - Knights of the Round Table

The 14th Century Round Table in Winchester, Hampshire. UK

Category:Arthurian legend Category:Tables (furniture)

ar:طاولة مستديرة br:An Daol Grenn bg:Кръгла маса ca:Taula Rodona cs:Kulatý stůl cy:Y Ford Gron da:Runde bord de:Runder Tisch el:Στρογγυλή Τράπεζα es:Mesa Redonda eo:Ronda Tablo eu:Mahai Borobila fr:Table ronde ko:원탁 io:Ronda tablo it:Tavola Rotonda hu:Kerekasztal nl:Ronde Tafel ja:円卓 no:Det runde bord pl:Rycerze Okrągłego Stołu ru:Круглый стол simple:Round Table sv:Runda bordet uk:Круглий стіл zh:圆桌骑士

Name	Dr. Norman Borlaug
Birth date	March 25, 1914
Birth place	Cresco, Iowa
Death date	September 12, 2009
Death place	Dallas, Texas
Citizenship	United States
Religion	Christianity
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	Norse
Field	Agronomy
Work institutions	DuPontCooperative Wheat Research and Production Program (Mexico)International Maize and Wheat Improvement CenterTexas A&M; University
Alma mater	University of Minnesota
Known for	His role in the Green Revolution, helping develop semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties, and as a founder of the World Food Prize
awards	Nobel Peace Prize (1970)Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977)Public Welfare Medal (2002)National Medal of Science (2004)Congressional Gold Medal (2006) }}

Norman Ernest Borlaug (March 25, 1914 – September 12, 2009) was an American agronomist, humanitarian, and Nobel laureate who has been called "the father of the Green Revolution". Borlaug was one of only six people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. He was also a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian honor.

Borlaug received his Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics from the University of Minnesota in 1942. He took up an agricultural research position in Mexico, where he developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties.

During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. As a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. Between 1965 and 1970, wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security in those nations. These collective increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply.

Later in his life, he helped apply these methods of increasing food production to Asia and Africa.

Early life, education, and family

Borlaug was the great-grandchild of Norwegian immigrants to the United States. Ole Olson Dybevig and Solveig Thomasdotter Rinde, from Feios, a small village in Leikanger, Norway, emigrated to Dane, Wisconsin, in 1854. The family eventually moved to the small Norwegian-American community of Saude, near Cresco, Iowa. There they were members of the Saude Lutheran Church, where Norman was both baptized and confirmed.

The eldest of four children — his three younger sisters were Palma Lillian (Behrens; 1916–2004), Charlotte (Culbert; b. 1919) and Helen (1921–1921) — Borlaug was born to Henry Oliver (1889–1971) and Clara (Vaala) Borlaug (1888–1972) on his grandparents' farm in Saude in 1914. From age seven to nineteen, he worked on the 106-acre (43-hectare) family farm west of Protivin, Iowa, fishing, hunting, and raising corn, oats, timothy-grass, cattle, pigs and chickens. He attended the one-teacher, one-room New Oregon #8 rural school in Howard County, through eighth grade. Today, the school building, built in 1865, is owned by the Norman Borlaug Heritage Foundation as part of "Project Borlaug Legacy". At Cresco High School, Borlaug played on the football, baseball and wrestling teams, on the latter of which his coach, Dave Barthelma, continually encouraged him to "give 105%".

He attributed his decision to leave the farm and pursue further education to his grandfather, Nels Olson Borlaug (1859–1935), who strongly encouraged Borlaug's learning, once saying, "You're wiser to fill your head now if you want to fill your belly later on." Through a Depression-era program known as the National Youth Administration, he was able to enroll at the University of Minnesota in 1933. Borlaug failed the entrance exam, but was accepted to the school's newly created two-year General College. After two quarters, he transferred to the College of Agriculture's forestry program. While at the University of Minnesota, he was a member of the varsity wrestling team, reaching the Big Ten semifinals; and helped introduce the sport to Minnesota high schools by putting on exhibition matches around the state.

"Wrestling taught me some valuable lessons ... I always figured I could hold my own against the best in the world. It made me tough. Many times, I drew on that strength. It's an inappropriate crutch perhaps, but that's the way I'm made".

Borlaug was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma, in 1992.

To finance his studies, Borlaug had to put his education on hold periodically to take a job. One of these jobs, in 1935, was as a leader in the Civilian Conservation Corps, working with the unemployed on U.S. federal projects. Many of the people who worked for him were starving. He later recalled, "I saw how food changed them ... All of this left scars on me". From 1935 to 1938, before and after receiving his Bachelor of Science in forestry in 1937, Borlaug worked for the United States Forestry Service at stations in Massachusetts and Idaho. He spent one summer in the middle fork of Idaho's Salmon River, the most isolated piece of wilderness in the lower 48 states at the time.

In the last months of his undergraduate education, Borlaug attended a Sigma Xi lecture by Elvin Charles Stakman, a professor and soon-to-be head of the plant pathology group at the University of Minnesota. The event was pivotal for Borlaug's future. Stakman, in his speech titled "These Shifty Little Enemies that Destroy our Food Crops", discussed the manifestation of the plant disease rust, a parasitic fungus that feeds on phytonutrients in wheat, oat, and barley crops across the U.S. He had discovered that special plant breeding methods created plants resistant to rust. His research greatly interested Borlaug, and when Borlaug's job at the Forest Service was eliminated because of budget cuts, he asked Stakman if he should go into forest pathology. Stakman advised him to focus on plant pathology instead. Borlaug subsequently enrolled at the University to study plant pathology under Stakman, receiving a Master of Science degree in 1940 and Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics in 1942.

Borlaug was a member of Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity. While in college, he met his future wife, Margaret Gibson, as he waited tables at a university Dinkytown coffee shop where they both worked. They had three children, Norma Jean "Jeanie" Laube, Scotty (who died soon after birth from spina bifida), and William Borlaug; five grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. On March 8, 2007, Margaret Borlaug died at the age of 95, following a fall. They had been married for 69 years. Borlaug spent the last years of his life in northern Dallas although, as a result of his global humanitarian efforts, he actually resided there only a few weeks of the year.

Career

From 1942 to 1944, Borlaug was employed as a microbiologist at DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware. It was planned that he would lead research on industrial and agricultural bacteriocides, fungicides, and preservatives. However, following the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, Borlaug tried to enlist in the military, but was rejected under wartime labor regulations; his lab was converted to conduct research for the United States armed forces. One of his first projects was to develop glue that could withstand the warm saltwater of the South Pacific. The Imperial Japanese Navy had gained control of the island of Guadalcanal, and patrolled the sky and sea by day. The only way for U.S. forces to supply the troops stranded on the island was to approach at night by speedboat, and jettison boxes of canned food and other supplies into the surf to wash ashore. The problem was that the glue holding these containers together disintegrated in saltwater. Within weeks, Borlaug and his colleagues had developed an adhesive that resisted corrosion, allowing food and supplies to reach the stranded Marines. Other tasks included work with camouflage; canteen disinfectants; DDT to control malaria; and insulation for small electronics.

In 1940, the Avila Camacho administration took office in Mexico. The administration's primary goal for Mexican agriculture was augmenting the nation's industrialization and economic growth. U.S. Vice President-Elect Henry Wallace, who was instrumental in persuading the Rockefeller Foundation to work with the Mexican government in agricultural development, saw Avila Camacho's ambitions as beneficial to U.S. economic and military interests. The Rockefeller Foundation contacted E.C. Stakman and two other leading agronomists. They developed a proposal for a new organization, the Office of Special Studies, as part of the Mexican Government, but directed by the Rockefeller Foundation. It was to be staffed with both U.S. and Mexican scientists, focusing on soil development, maize and wheat production, and plant pathology.

Stakman chose Dr. J. George "Dutch" Harrar as project leader. Harrar immediately set out to hire Borlaug as head of the newly established Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Program in Mexico; Borlaug declined, choosing to finish his war service at DuPont. In July 1944, after rejecting DuPont's offer to double his salary, and temporarily leaving behind his pregnant wife and 14-month-old daughter, he flew to Mexico City to head the new program as a geneticist and plant pathologist.

In 1964, he was made the director of the International Wheat Improvement Program at El Batán, Texcoco, on the eastern fringes of Mexico City, as part of the newly established Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research's International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center ''(Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo,'' or CIMMYT). Funding for this autonomous international research training institute developed from the Cooperative Wheat Research Production Program was undertaken jointly by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and the Mexican government.

Borlaug retired officially from the position in 1979, but remained a CIMMYT senior consultant. In addition to taking up charitable and educational roles, he continued to be involved in plant research at CIMMYT with wheat, triticale, barley, maize, and high-altitude sorghum.

In 1984 Borlaug began teaching and conducting research at Texas A&M; University. Eventually being given the title Distinguished Professor of International Agriculture at the university and the holder of the Eugene Butler Endowed Chair in Agricultural Biotechnology, Borlaug remained at A&M; until his death in September 2009.

Wheat research in Mexico

The Cooperative Wheat Research Production Program, a joint venture by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture, involved research in genetics, plant breeding, plant pathology, entomology, agronomy, soil science, and cereal technology. The goal of the project was to boost wheat production in Mexico, which at the time was importing a large portion of its grain. Plant pathologist George Harrar recruited and assembled the wheat research team in late 1944. The four other members were William Colwell; maize breeder Edward Wellhausen; potato breeder John Niederhauser; and Norman Borlaug, all from the United States. During the sixteen years Borlaug remained with the project, he bred a series of remarkably successful high-yield, disease-resistant, semi-dwarf wheat.

Borlaug said that his first few years in Mexico were difficult. He lacked trained scientists and equipment. Native farmers were hostile toward the wheat program because of serious crop losses from 1939 to 1941 due to stem rust. "It often appeared to me that I had made a dreadful mistake in accepting the position in Mexico," he wrote in the epilogue to his book, ''Norman Borlaug on World Hunger''. He spent the first 10 years breeding wheat cultivars resistant to disease, including rust. In that time, his group made 6,000 individual crossings of wheat.

Double wheat season

Initially, Borlaug's work had been concentrated in the central highlands, in the village of Chapingo near Texcoco, where the problems with rust and poor soil were most prevalent. He realized that he could speed up breeding by taking advantage of the country's two growing seasons. In the summer he would breed wheat in the central highlands as usual, then immediately take the seeds north to the Yaqui Valley research station near Ciudad Obregón, Sonora. The difference in altitudes and temperatures would allow more crops to be grown each year.

Borlaug's boss, George Harrar, was against this expansion. Besides the extra costs of doubling the work, Borlaug's plan went against a then-held principle of agronomy that has since been disproved. It was believed that to store energy for germination before being planted, seeds needed a rest period after harvesting. When Harrar vetoed his plan, Borlaug resigned. Elvin Stakman, who was visiting the project, calmed the situation, talking Borlaug into withdrawing his resignation and Harrar into allowing the double wheat season. As of 1945, wheat would then be bred at locations 700 miles (1000 km) apart, 10 degrees apart in latitude, and 8500 feet (2600 m) apart in altitude. This was called "shuttle breeding".

As an unexpected benefit of the double wheat season, the new breeds did not have problems with photoperiodism. Normally, wheat varieties cannot adapt to new environments, due to the changing periods of sunlight. Borlaug later recalled, "As it worked out, in the north, we were planting when the days were getting shorter, at low elevation and high temperature. Then we'd take the seed from the best plants south and plant it at high elevation, when days were getting longer and there was lots of rain. Soon we had varieties that fit the whole range of conditions. That wasn't supposed to happen by the books". This meant that the project would not need to start separate breeding programs for each geographic region of the planet.

Increasing disease resistance through multiline varieties

Because pureline (genotypically identical) plant varieties often only have one or a few major genes for disease resistance, and plant diseases such as rust are continuously producing new races that can overcome a pureline's resistance, multiline varieties were developed. Multiline varieties are mixtures of several phenotypically similar purelines which each have different genes for disease resistance. By having similar heights, flowering and maturity dates, seed colors, and agronomic characteristics, they remain compatible with each other, and do not reduce yields when grown together on the field.

In 1953, Borlaug extended this technique by suggesting that several purelines with different resistance genes should be developed through backcross methods using one recurrent parent. Backcrossing involves crossing a hybrid and subsequent generations with a recurrent parent. As a result, the genotype of the backcrossed progeny becomes increasingly similar to that of the recurrent parent. Borlaug's method would allow the various different disease-resistant genes from several donor parents to be transferred into a single recurrent parent. To make sure each line has different resistant genes, each donor parent is used in a separate backcross program. Between five and ten of these lines may then be mixed depending upon the races of pathogen present in the region. As this process is repeated, some lines will become susceptible to the pathogen. These lines can easily be replaced with new resistant lines. As new sources of resistance become available, new lines are developed. In this way, the loss of crops is kept to a minimum, because only one or a few lines become susceptible to a pathogen within a given season, and all other crops are unaffected by the disease. Because the disease would spread more slowly than if the entire population were susceptible, this also reduces the damage to susceptible lines. There is still the possibility that a new race of pathogen will develop to which all lines are susceptible, however.

Dwarfing

Dwarfing is an important agronomic quality for wheat; dwarf plants produce thick stems. The cultivars Borlaug worked with had tall, thin stalks. Taller wheat grasses better compete for sunlight, but tend to collapse under the weight of the extra grain—a trait called lodging— from the rapid growth spurts induced by nitrogen fertilizer Borlaug used in the poor soil. To prevent this, he bred wheat to favor shorter, stronger stalks that could better support larger seed heads. In 1953, he acquired a Japanese dwarf variety of wheat called Norin 10 developed by Orville Vogel, that had been crossed with a high-yielding American cultivar called Brevor 14. Norin 10/Brevor is semi-dwarf (one-half to two-thirds the height of standard varieties) and produces more stalks and thus more heads of grain per plant. Also, larger amounts of assimilate were partitioned into the actual grains, further increasing the yield. Borlaug crossbred the semi-dwarf Norin 10/Brevor cultivar with his disease-resistant cultivars to produce wheat varieties that were adapted to tropical and sub-tropical climates.

Borlaug's new semi-dwarf, disease-resistant varieties, called Pitic 62 and Penjamo 62, changed the potential yield of spring wheat dramatically. By 1963, 95% of Mexico's wheat crops used the semi-dwarf varieties developed by Borlaug. That year, the harvest was six times larger than in 1944, the year Borlaug arrived in Mexico. Mexico had become fully self-sufficient in wheat production, and a net exporter of wheat. Four other high yield varieties were also released, in 1964: Lerma Rojo 64, Siete Cerros, Sonora 64, and Super X.

Expansion to South Asia: The Green Revolution

In 1961 to 1962, Borlaug's dwarf spring wheat strains were sent for multilocation testing in the International Wheat Rust Nursery, organized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In March 1962, a few of these strains were grown in the fields of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in Pusa, New Delhi, India. In May 1962, M. S. Swaminathan, a member of IARI's wheat program, requested of Dr. B. P. Pal, Director of IARI, to arrange for the visit of Borlaug to India and to obtain a wide range of dwarf wheat seed possessing the Norin 10 dwarfing genes. The letter was forwarded to the Indian Ministry of Agriculture, which arranged with the Rockefeller Foundation for Borlaug's visit. In March 1963, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican government sent Borlaug and Dr. Robert Glenn Anderson to India to continue his work. He supplied 100 kg (220 lb) of seed from each of the four most promising strains and 630 promising selections in advanced generations to the IARI in October 1963, and test plots were subsequently planted at Delhi, Ludhiana, Pant Nagar, Kanpur, Pune and Indore. Anderson stayed as head of the Rockefeller Foundation Wheat Program in New Delhi until 1975.

During the mid-1960s, the Indian subcontinent was at war, and experiencing widespread famine and starvation, even though the U.S. was making emergency shipments of millions of tons of grain, including over one fifth of its total wheat, to the region. The Indian and Pakistani bureaucracies and the region's cultural opposition to new agricultural techniques initially prevented Borlaug from fulfilling his desire to immediately plant the new wheat strains there. By the summer of 1965, the famine became so acute that the governments stepped in and allowed his projects to go forward.

Biologist Paul R. Ehrlich wrote in his 1968 bestseller ''The Population Bomb'', "The battle to feed all of humanity is over ... In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." Ehrlich said, "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971," and "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980."

In 1965, after extensive testing, Borlaug's team, under Anderson, began its effort by importing about 450 tons of Lerma Rojo and Sonora 64 semi-dwarf seed varieties: 250 tons went to Pakistan and 200 to India. They encountered many obstacles. Their first shipment of wheat was held up in Mexican customs and so could not be shipped from the port at Guaymas in time for proper planting. Instead, it was sent via a 30-truck convoy from Mexico to the U.S. port in Los Angeles, encountering delays at the Mexico - United States border. Once the convoy entered the U.S., it had to take a detour, as the U.S. National Guard had closed the freeway due to Watts riots in Los Angeles. When the seeds reached Los Angeles, a Mexican bank refused to honor Pakistan treasury's payment of US$100,000, because the check contained three misspelled words. Still, the seed was loaded onto a freighter destined for Bombay, India, and Karachi, Pakistan. Twelve hours into the freighter's voyage, war broke out between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region. Borlaug received a telegraph from the Pakistani minister of agriculture, Malik Khuda Bakhsh Bucha: "I'm sorry to hear you are having trouble with my check, but I've got troubles, too. Bombs are falling on my front lawn. Be patient, the money is in the bank ..."

These delays prevented Borlaug's group from conducting the germination tests needed to determine seed quality and proper seeding levels. They started planting immediately, and often worked in sight of artillery flashes. A week later, Borlaug discovered that his seeds were germinating at less than half the normal rate. It later turned out that the seeds had been damaged in a Mexican warehouse by over-fumigation with a pesticide. He immediately ordered all locations to double their seeding rates.

The initial yields of Borlaug's crops were higher than any ever harvested in South Asia. The countries subsequently committed to importing large quantities of both the Lerma Rojo 64 and Sonora 64 varieties. In 1966, India imported 18,000 tons —the largest purchase and import of any seed in the world at that time. In 1967, Pakistan imported 42,000 tons, and Turkey 21,000 tons. Pakistan's import, planted on 1.5 million acres (6,100 km²), produced enough wheat to seed the entire nation's wheatland the following year. By 1968, when Ehrlich's book was released, William Gaud of the United States Agency for International Development was calling Borlaug's work a "Green Revolution". High yields led to a shortage of various utilities — labor to harvest the crops, bullock carts to haul it to the threshing floor, jute bags, trucks, rail cars, and grain storage facilities. Some local governments were forced to close school buildings temporarily to use them for grain storage.

In Pakistan, wheat yields nearly doubled, from 4.6 million tons in 1965 to 7.3 million tons in 1970; Pakistan was self-sufficient in wheat production by 1968. Yields were over 21 million tons by 2000. In India, yields increased from 12.3 million tons in 1965 to 20.1 million tons in 1970. By 1974, India was self-sufficient in the production of all cereals. By 2000, India was harvesting a record 76.4 million tons (2.81 billion bushels) of wheat. Since the 1960s, food production in both nations has increased faster than the rate of population growth. Paul Waggoner, of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, calculates that India's use of high-yield farming has prevented 100 million acres (400,000 km²) of virgin land from being converted into farmland—an area about the size of California, or 13.6% of the total area of India. The use of these wheat varieties has also had a substantial effect on production in six Latin American countries, six countries in the Near and Middle East, and several others in Africa.

Borlaug's work with wheat led to the development of high-yield semi-dwarf ''indica'' and ''japonica'' rice cultivars at the International Rice Research Institute, started by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, and at China's Hunan Rice Research Institute. Borlaug's colleagues at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research also developed and introduced a high-yield variety of rice throughout most of Asia. Land devoted to the semi-dwarf wheat and rice varieties in Asia expanded from 200 acres (0.8 km²) in 1965 to over 40 million acres (160,000 km²) in 1970. In 1970, this land accounted for over 10% of the more productive cereal land in Asia.

Nobel Peace Prize

For his contributions to the world food supply, Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. Norwegian officials notified his wife in Mexico City at 4:00 am, but Borlaug had already left for the test fields in the Toluca valley, about 40 miles (65 km) west of Mexico City. A chauffeur took her to the fields to inform her husband. According to his daughter, Jeanie Laube, "My mom said, 'You won the Nobel Peace Prize,' and he said, 'No, I haven't', ... It took some convincing ... He thought the whole thing was a hoax". He was awarded the prize on December 10. In his Nobel Lecture the following day, he speculated on his award: "When the Nobel Peace Prize Committee designated me the recipient of the 1970 award for my contribution to the 'green revolution', they were in effect, I believe, selecting an individual to symbolize the vital role of agriculture and food production in a world that is hungry, both for bread and for peace".

Borlaug hypothesis

Borlaug continually advocated increasing crop yields as a means to curb deforestation. The large role he played in both increasing crop yields and promoting this view has led to this methodology being called by agricultural economists the "Borlaug hypothesis", namely that ''increasing the productivity of agriculture on the best farmland can help control deforestation by reducing the demand for new farmland''. According to this view, assuming that global food demand is on the rise, restricting crop usage to traditional low-yield methods would also require at least one of the following: the world population to decrease, either voluntarily or as a result of mass starvations; or the conversion of forest land into crop land. It is thus argued that high-yield techniques are ultimately saving ecosystems from destruction. On a global scale, this view holds strictly true ''ceteris paribus'', if deforestation only occurs to increase land for agriculture. But other land uses exist, such as urban areas, pasture, or fallow, so further research is necessary to ascertain what land has been converted for what purposes, to determine how true this view remains. Increased profits from high-yield production may also induce cropland expansion in any case, although as world food needs decrease, this expansion may decrease as well.

Criticisms and his view of critics

Borlaug's name is nearly synonymous with the Green Revolution, against which many criticisms have been mounted over the decades by environmentalists, nutritionists, progressives, and economists. Throughout his years of research, Borlaug's programs often faced opposition by people who consider genetic crossbreeding to be unnatural or to have negative effects. Borlaug's work has been criticized for bringing large-scale monoculture, input-intensive farming techniques to countries that had previously relied on subsistence farming. These farming techniques reap large profits for U.S. agribusiness and agrochemical corporations such as Monsanto Company and have been criticized for widening social inequality in the countries owing to uneven food distribution while forcing a capitalist agenda of U.S. corporations onto countries that had undergone land reform.

Other concerns of his critics and critics of biotechnology in general include: that the construction of roads in populated third-world areas could lead to the destruction of wilderness; the crossing of genetic barriers; the inability of crops to fulfill all nutritional requirements; the decreased biodiversity from planting a small number of varieties; the environmental and economic effects of inorganic fertilizer and pesticides; the amount of herbicide sprayed on fields of herbicide-resistant crops.

Borlaug dismissed most claims of critics, but did take certain concerns seriously. He stated that his work has been "a change in the right direction, but it has not transformed the world into a Utopia". Of environmental lobbyists he stated, "some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things".

Later roles

Following his retirement, Borlaug had continued to participate actively in teaching, research and activism. He spent much of the year based at CIMMYT in Mexico, conducting research, and four months of the year serving at Texas A&M; University, where he had been a distinguished professor of international agriculture since 1984. In 1999, the university's Board of Regents named its US$16 million Center for Southern Crop Improvement in honor of Borlaug. He worked in the building's Heep Center, and taught one semester each year.

Production in Africa

In the early 1980s, environmental groups that were opposed to Borlaug's methods campaigned against his planned expansion of efforts into Africa. They prompted the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations and the World Bank to stop funding most of his African agriculture projects. Western European governments were persuaded to stop supplying fertilizer to Africa. According to David Seckler, former Director General of the International Water Management Institute, "the environmental community in the 1980s went crazy pressuring the donor countries and the big foundations not to support ideas like inorganic fertilizers for Africa."

In 1984, during the Ethiopian famine, Ryoichi Sasakawa, the chairman of the Japan Shipbuilding Industry Foundation (now the Nippon Foundation), contacted the semi-retired Borlaug, wondering why the methods used in Asia were not extended to Africa, and hoping Borlaug could help. He managed to convince Borlaug to help with this new effort, and subsequently founded the Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA) to coordinate the project.

The SAA is a research and extension organization that aims to increase food production in African countries that are struggling with food shortages. "I assumed we'd do a few years of research first," Borlaug later recalled, "but after I saw the terrible circumstances there, I said, 'Let's just start growing'." Soon, Borlaug and the SAA had projects in seven countries. Yields of maize and sorghum in developed African countries doubled between 1983 and 1985. Yields of wheat, cassava, and cowpeas also increased in these countries. At present, program activities are under way in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda.

From 1986 to 2009, Borlaug was the President of the SAA. That year, a joint venture between The Carter Center and SAA was launched called Sasakawa-Global 2000 (SG 2000). The program focuses on food, population and agricultural policy. Since then, more than 8 million African, small-scale farmers in 15 countries have been trained in SAA farming techniques, which have helped them to double or triple grain production. Those elements that allowed Borlaug's projects to succeed in India and Pakistan, such as well-organized economies and transportation and irrigation systems, are severely lacking throughout Africa, posing additional obstacles to increasing yields. Because of this, Borlaug's initial projects were restricted to developed regions of the continent.

Despite these setbacks, Borlaug found encouragement. Visiting Ethiopia in 1994, Jimmy Carter won Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's support for a campaign seeking to aid farmers, using the fertilizer diammonium phosphate and Borlaug's methods. The following season, Ethiopia recorded the largest harvests of major crops in history, with a 32% increase in production, and a 15% increase in average yield over the previous season. For Borlaug, the rapid increase in yields suggests that there is still hope for higher food production throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

World Food Prize

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. The prize was created in 1986 by Norman Borlaug, as a way to recognize personal accomplishments, and as a means of education by using the Prize to establish role models for others. The first prize was given to Borlaug's former colleague, M. S. Swaminathan, in 1987, for his work in India. The next year, Swaminathan used the US$250,000 prize to start the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation for research on sustainable development.

Online education

At the DuPont Agriculture & Nutrition Media Day held in Des Moines, Iowa, on September 25, 2000, Borlaug announced the launch of Norman Borlaug University, an Internet-based learning company for the agriculture and food industry personnel. The University was unable to expand the necessary content or customer base, and since late 2001 has been defunct.

The future of global farming and food supply

The limited potential for land expansion for cultivation worried Borlaug, who, in March 2005, stated that, "we will have to double the world food supply by 2050." With 85% of future growth in food production having to come from lands already in use, he recommends a multidisciplinary research focus to further increase yields, mainly through increased crop immunity to large-scale diseases, such as the rust fungus, which affects all cereals but rice. His dream was to "transfer rice immunity to cereals such as wheat, maize, sorghum and barley, and transfer bread-wheat proteins (gliadin and glutenin) to other cereals, especially rice and maize".

Borlaug believed that genetic manipulation of organisms (GMO) was the only way to increase food production as the world runs out of unused arable land. GMOs were not inherently dangerous "because we've been genetically modifying plants and animals for a long time. Long before we called it science, people were selecting the best breeds."

According to Borlaug, "Africa, the former Soviet republics, and the cerrado are the last frontiers. After they are in use, the world will have no additional sizable blocks of arable land left to put into production, unless you are willing to level whole forests, which you should not do. So, future food-production increases will have to come from higher yields. And though I have no doubt yields will keep going up, whether they can go up enough to feed the population monster is another matter. Unless progress with agricultural yields remains very strong, the next century will experience sheer human misery that, on a numerical scale, will exceed the worst of everything that has come before".

Besides increasing the worldwide food supply, early in his career Borlaug stated that taking steps to decrease the rate of population growth will also be necessary to prevent food shortages. In his Nobel Lecture of 1970, Borlaug stated, "Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the 'Population Monster' ... If it continues to increase at the estimated present rate of two percent a year, the world population will reach 6.5 billion by the year 2000. Currently, with each second, or tick of the clock, about 2.2 additional people are added to the world population. The rhythm of increase will accelerate to 2.7, 3.3, and 4.0 for each tick of the clock by 1980, 1990, and 2000, respectively, unless man becomes more realistic and preoccupied about this impending doom. The tick-tock of the clock will continually grow louder and more menacing each decade. Where will it all end?" However, some observers have suggested that by the 1990s Borlaug had changed his position on population control. They point to a quote from the year 2000 in which he stated: "I now say that the world has the technology — either available or well advanced in the research pipeline — to feed on a sustainable basis a population of 10 billion people. The more pertinent question today is whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use this new technology? While the affluent nations can certainly afford to adopt ultra low-risk positions, and pay more for food produced by the so-called 'organic' methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the low income, food-deficit nations cannot." However, Borlaug remained on the advisory board of Population Media Center, an organization working to stabilize world population, until his death.

Death

Borlaug died of lymphoma at the age of 95, on September 12, 2009, in his Dallas home. Borlaug's children released a statement saying, }} Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh and President of India Pratibha Patil paid tribute to Borlaug saying, }} United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) described Borlaug as }} Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations said, }}

Honors and recognition

In 1968, Borlaug received what he considered an especially satisfying tribute when the people of Ciudad Obregón, where some of his earliest experiments were undertaken, named a street after him. Also in that year, he became a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

In 1970, he was given an honorary doctorate by the Agricultural University of Norway.

In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by the Norwegian Nobel Committee "for his contributions to the "green revolution" that was having such an impact on food production particularly in Asia and in Latin America."

In 1975, he was named a Distinguished Fellow of the Iowa Academy of Science.

In 1980, he was elected honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

In 1984, his name was placed in the National Agricultural Hall of Fame at the national center in Bonner Springs, Kansas. Also that year, he was recognized for sustained service to humanity through outstanding contributions in plant breeding from the Governors Conference on Agriculture Innovations in Little Rock, Arkansas. Also in 1984, he received the Henry G. Bennet Distinguished Service Award at commencement ceremonies at Oklahoma State University. He recently received the Charles A. Black Award for his contributions to public policy and the public understanding of science.

In 1985, the University of Minnesota named a wing of the new science building in Borlaug's honor, calling it "Borlaug Hall."

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Borlaug received the 1977 U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the 2002 Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences, the 2002 Rotary International Award for World Understanding and Peace, and the 2004 National Medal of Science. As of January 2004, Borlaug had received 49 honorary degrees from as many universities, in 18 countries, the most recent from Dartmouth College on June 12, 2005, and was a foreign or honorary member of 22 international Academies of Sciences. In Iowa and Minnesota, "World Food Day", October 16, is referred to as "Norman Borlaug World Food Prize Day". Throughout the United States, it is referred to as "World Food Prize Day".

The Government of India, where he is known as the Father of India's Green Revolution, conferred the Padma Vibhushan, its second highest civilian award on him in 2006. He was awarded the Danforth Award for Plant Science by the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, St Louis, Missouri in recognition of his life-long commitment to increasing global agricultural production through plant science.

Several research institutions and buildings have been named in his honor, including: the Norman E. Borlaug Center for Farmer Training and Education, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, in 1983; Borlaug Hall, on the St. Paul Campus of the University of Minnesota in 1985; Borlaug Building at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) headquarters in 1986; the Norman Borlaug Institute for Plant Science Research at De Montfort University, Leicester, United Kingdom in 1997; and the Norman E. Borlaug Center for Southern Crop Improvement, at Texas A&M; University in 1999. In 2006, the Texas A&M; University System created the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture to be a premier institution for agricultural development and to continue the legacy of Dr. Borlaug.

The stained-glass "World Peace Window" at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in Minneapolis, Minnesota, depicts "peace makers" of the 20th century, including Norman Borlaug. Borlaug was also prominently mentioned in an episode ("In this White House") of the TV show ''The West Wing''. The president of a fictional African country describes the kind of "miracle" needed to save his country from the ravages of AIDS by referencing an American scientist who was able to save the world from hunger through the development of a new type of wheat. The U.S. president replies by providing Borlaug's name.

Borlaug was also featured in an episode of ''Penn & Teller: Bullshit!'', where he was referred to as the "Greatest Human Being That Ever Lived". In that episode, Penn & Teller play a card game where each card depicts a great person in history. Each player picks a few cards at random, and bets on whether one thinks one's card shows a greater person than the other players' cards based on a characterization such as humanitarianism or scientific achievement. Penn gets Norman Borlaug, and proceeds to bet all his chips, his house, his rings, his watch, and essentially everything he's ever owned. He wins because, as he says, "Norman is the greatest human being, and you've probably never heard of him." In the episode — the topic of which was genetically altered food — he is credited with saving the lives of over a billion people.

In August 2006, Dr. Leon Hesser published ''The Man Who Fed the World: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug and His Battle to End World Hunger'', an account of Borlaug's life and work. On August 4, the book received the 2006 Print of Peace award, as part of International Read For Peace Week.

On September 27, 2006, the United States Senate by unanimous consent passed the Congressional Tribute to Dr. Norman E. Borlaug Act of 2006. The act authorizes that Borlaug be awarded America's highest civilian award, the Congressional Gold Medal. On December 6, 2006, the House of Representatives passed the measure by voice vote. President George Bush signed the bill into law on December 14, 2006, and it became Public Law Number 109–395. According to the act, "the number of lives Dr. Borlaug has saved [is] more than a billion people" The act authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to strike and sell duplicates of the medal in bronze. He was presented with the medal on July 17, 2007.

Borlaug was a foreign fellow of the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences.

Books and lectures

:''This list is incomplete.''

''Wheat in the Third World''. 1982. Authors: Haldore Hanson, Norman E. Borlaug, and R. Glenn Anderson. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. ISBN 0-86531-357-1

''Land use, food, energy and recreation''. 1983. Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. ISBN 0-940222-07-8

''Feeding a human population that increasingly crowds a fragile planet''. 1994. Mexico City. ISBN

968-6201-34-3

''Norman Borlaug on World Hunger''. 1997. Edited by Anwar Dil. San Diego/Islamabad/Lahore: Bookservice International. 499 pages. ISBN 0-9640492-3-6

''The Green Revolution Revisited and the Road Ahead''. 2000. Anniversary Nobel Lecture, Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway. September 8, 2000.

"Ending World Hunger. The Promise of Biotechnology and the Threat of Antiscience Zealotry". 2000. ''Plant Physiology'', October 2000, Vol. 124, pp. 487–490. (duplicate)

''Feeding a World of 10 Billion People: The Tva/Ifdc Legacy''. 2003. ISBN 0-88090-144-6

''Prospects for world agriculture in the twenty-first century''. 2004. Norman E. Borlaug, Christopher R. Dowswell. Published in: ''Sustainable agriculture and the international rice-wheat system''. ISBN 0-8247-5491-3

Foreword to ''The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution''. 2004. Henry I. Miller, Gregory Conko. ISBN 0-275-97879-6

Norman E. Borlaug (2007) Sixty-two years of fighting hunger: personal recollections. Euphytica 157:287–297 ()

Further reading

See also

Borlaug Dialogue — The Norman E. Borlaug International Symposium

References

External links

Videos and speeches

Lecture, Nobel Centennial Symposia. 2001 December 6. RealMedia. 00:11:34.

Lecture, The Famous Purdue Ag Fish Fry. 2003 February 8. MS Media. 02:21:02.

30th Anniversary Nobel Lecture. ''The Green Revolution Revisited and the Road Ahead''. 2000. Transcript. PDF.

. 2000. Transcript.

Dedication lecture, Delaware Biotechnology Institute. ''Feeding the World in the 21st century—The Role of New Science and Technology''. 2001 April 26. RealMedia. 00:47:42.

The Story of Norman Borlaug: 60 Years Fighting Hunger. 2003 July 10. RealMedia. 01:29:02.

Discussion, Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program. 2004 January 5–9. University of California, Berkeley. Text.

ECON100A Lecture, University of California, Berkeley. 2004 Spring. RealMedia. 01:29:02.

Commencement address, University of Minnesota. 2004 May. CD track.

CEI Prometheus award acceptance speech. 2004 May 19. MS Media. 00:10:57.

Inaugural address, 1st World Congress of Agroforestry. 2004 June 27. Orlando, Florida, USA. RealMedia. 01:06:34.

Keynote speech, USDA Agricultural Outlook Forum. 2005 February 24. Arlington, Virginia, USA. MS Media. 35 minutes.

Radio interview by Penn Jillette. 2006 August 9. MP3 format. 00:43:27.

Borlaug's York Lecture at American Society of Agronomy Annual Meetings. ''Challenges for the Crop Scientist in the 21st Century''. 2007. Windows Media and Quicktime

Nobel Laureate Borlaug on Why Famines Still Exist - ''Wall Street Journal'' - September 14, 2009

Organizations and programs

Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture - Texas A&M; University System

The Borlaug Center for Southern Crop Improvement - Texas A&M; University System

Norman E. Borlaug International Agricultural Science and Technology Fellows Program

Interview

Farmers Can Feed the World: Better seeds and fertilizers, not romantic myths, will let them do it by Norman Borlaug - ''Wall Street Journal'' - July 30, 2009

High Praise

He saved a billion lives - The Washington Times

A man for all seasons - The Washington Times

Still feeding the world - The Washington Times

Obituaries and other

Obituary, New York Times

Editorials: "On the shoulders of giants" and "Learning from the plants" Rice Today, Vol. 8, No.4., October–December 2009.

A tribute to Norman Borlaug (1914-2009): Passion, persistence and persuasion By Robert W. Herdt, Rice Today, Vol. 8, No.4., October–December 2009.

Tribute to the Father of the Green Revolution Rice Today, Vol. 8, No. 4, pages 4, 6, 32-34.

Obituary in Science

Norman Borlaug - Daily Telegraph obituary

"The man who fed the world", memorial at Wall Street Journal

Obituary, Reason's Hit & Run

The Life and Work of Norman Borlaug, Nobel Laureate

"Biotechnology and the Green Revolution", interview from November 2002

Norman Borlaug: The Legend (agbioworld.com)

Journal articles by Borlaug on PubMed

List of Norman Borlaug articles and interviews

"Billions Served", an interview in ''Reason'' by Ronald Bailey.

"Stem Rust Never Sleeps" New York Times article by him on current epidemic affecting the world’s wheat crops and, potentially, food supply

The Man Who Defused the 'Population Bomb' by Gregg Easterbrook - Opinionjournal.com - September 16, 2009

Father of 'Green Revolution' Dies by Scott Kilman and Roger Thurow - ''Wall Street Journal'' - September 13, 2009

Notable & Quotable: The late Norman Borlaug on civilization and agricultural production - Opinionjournal.com - September 13, 2009

Borlaug: Not by bread alone

Breakpoint commentary and tribute on his life's work

Borlaug papers 1941-1997 Research source in the special manuscript collection at Iowa State University. Includes materials by colleagues Glen Anderson, Oddvar Aresvik, P. Bronzi, Dr. Keith Finlay, Dr. Charles Krull, Dr. W. McCuiston, Dr. Albert H. Moseman, Dr. Ignacio Narvaez, Evangelina Villegas, G. Spoelberch and Dr. Frank Zilinsky.

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Name	Andrew Zachary Fire
Birth date	April 27, 1959
Birth place	Palo Alto, California
Residence	Stanford, California
Nationality	American
Field	Biologist
Work institutions	Johns Hopkins UniversityStanford University
Alma mater	University of California, BerkeleyMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Doctoral advisor	Phillip Allen Sharp
Known for	RNA interference
Prizes	Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2006)
Signature	}}

Andrew Zachary Fire (born April 27, 1959) is an American biologist and professor of pathology and of genetics at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Craig C. Mello, for the discovery of RNA interference (RNAi). This research was conducted at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and published in 1998.

Biography

Andrew Fire was born in Palo Alto, California and raised in Sunnyvale, California. He graduated from Fremont High School. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he received a B.A. in mathematics in 1978 at the age of 19. He then proceeded to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a Ph.D. in biology in 1983 under the mentorship of Nobel laureate geneticist Phillip Sharp.

Fire moved to Cambridge, England, as a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellow. He became a member of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology group headed by Nobel laureate biologist Sydney Brenner.

From 1986 to 2003, Fire was a staff member of the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Department of Embryology in Baltimore, Maryland. The initial work on double stranded RNA as a trigger of gene silencing was published while Fire and his group were at the Carnegie Labs. Fire became an adjunct professor in the Department of Biology at Johns Hopkins University in 1989 and joined the Stanford faculty in 2003. Throughout his career, Fire has been supported by research grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Fire is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also serves on the Board of Scientific Counselors and the National Center for Biotechnology, National Institutes of Health.

Nobel prize

In 2006, Fire and Craig Mello shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work first published in 1998 in the journal ''Nature''. Fire and Mello, along with colleagues SiQun Xu, Mary Montgomery, Stephen Kostas, and Sam Driver, reported that tiny snippets of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) effectively shut down specific genes, driving the destruction of messenger RNA (mRNA) with sequences matching the dsRNA. As a result, the mRNA cannot be translated into protein. Fire and Mello found that dsRNA was much more effective in gene silencing than the previously described method of RNA interference with single-stranded RNA. Because only small numbers of dsRNA molecules were required for the observed effect, Fire and Mello proposed that a catalytic process was involved. This hypothesis was confirmed by subsequent research.

The Nobel Prize citation, issued by Sweden's Karolinska Institute, said: "This year's Nobel Laureates have discovered a fundamental mechanism for controlling the flow of genetic information." The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) quoted Nick Hastie, director of the Medical Research Council's Human Genetics Unit, on the scope and implications of the research:

Awards and honors

Fire has received the following awards and honors: (By chronological year of award )

Meyenburg Prize in 2002

Co-recipient (with Craig Mello) of National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology in 2003

Co-recipient (with Craig Mello, Thomas Tuschl and David Baulcombe) of the Wiley Prize in the Biomedical Sciences from Rockefeller University in 2003

Elected member National Academy of Sciences in 2004

Co-recipient (with Victor Ambros, Craig Mello, and Gary Ruvkun) of Brandeis University's Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Medical Research in 2005

Co-recipient (with Craig Mello) of the Gairdner Foundation International Award in 2005

Co-recipient (with Craig Mello and David Baulcombe) of Massry Prize in 2005

Co-recipient (with Craig Mello) of the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize in 2006

Co-recipient (with Craig Mello) of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2006

See also

History of RNA biology

List of Jewish Nobel laureates

List of RNA biologists

References

External links

Nobel Prize information

Nobel Prize lecture

Carnegie Institution for Science

Nobel announcement from Stanford University

Nobel announcement from the University of Massachusetts

US Patent 6506559 Genetic inhibition by double-stranded RNA (patent)

Potent and specific genetic interference by double-stranded RNA in Caenorhabditis elegans, in ''Nature'', via University of Massachusetts

Category:1959 births Category:American biologists Category:Members of the European Molecular Biology Organization Category:American geneticists Category:American Nobel laureates Category:California scholars Category:Living people Category:Johns Hopkins University faculty Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Category:Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine Category:Stanford University faculty Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:People from Palo Alto, California

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