World’s Greatest Unknown Hero Dies

On Saturday, Nobel Prize winner Norman Borlaug died at the age of ninety-five. Few men have ever done more good for the human race— yet few people today know who he is or what he did. Classically Liberal explains why he was one of the most important persons of the modern age :

In this writer’s opinion, it is no exaggeration to say that the world has just lost one of the greatest human being who has ever lived, perhaps the greatest. We often judge the nature of evil by the number of human lives that were extinguished. Names that come to mind, of cruel, killers include Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Che, and Castro. In the name of some “greater good” these individuals extinguished the lives of others.

Conversely I would argue that saving lives is a sign of human good. And I can not think of anyone responsible for saving more lives than Norman Borlaug. Borlaug died at the age of 95, still working on saving lives.

[ . . . ]

It is no exaggeration to say that Norman Borlaug saved the lives of hundreds of millions of people, perhaps billions. And the saving of lives will go on for generations to come. I suggest that future efforts to expand his work will meet the same two enemies: state bureaucracy and the environmental movement.

Borlaug was also one of the early trustees of the Christian anti-hunger organization,  Bread for the World .