Chennai: An eminent plant geneticist and Father of the Green Revolution in India, Dr M S Swaminathan, died at the age of 98 on Thursday. He was also the founder of the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) established in 1988.
Born in Kumbakonam, he earned his bachelor’s degree in agricultural sciences at the Madras Agricultural College and went on to pursue a Ph.D. in genetics and plant breeding from the University of Cambridge, England.
He was greatly influenced by the Bengal famine in 1943 in which lakhs of people died and took up agricultural research.
He was a key figure in the Green Revolution, which was launched by the central government in 1965. This initiative played a big part in India becoming a food-deficient nation to one of the world’s leading agricultural nations.
Swaminathan has been acclaimed by TIME magazine as one of the twenty most influential Asians of the 20th century and one of the only three from India, the other two being Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore.
He has also held several positions in the government including the Director of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (1961-72), Director General of Indian Council of Agricultural Research and Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Agricultural Research and Education (1972-79), Principal Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture (1979-80), Acting Deputy Chairman and later Member (Science and Agriculture), Planning Commission (1980-82) and Director General, International Rice Research Institute, the Philippines (1982-88).
Swaminathan was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 1971, the Albert Einstein World Science Award in 1986, the First World Food Prize in 1987, Volvo, Tyler and UNEP Sasakawa Prize for Environment, the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development in 2000 and the Franklin D Roosevelt Four Freedoms Medal, the Mahatma Gandhi Prize of UNESCO in 2000 and the Lal Bahadur Sastri National Award (2007). He is also the recipient of Padma Shri (1967), Padma Bhushan (1972) and Padma Vibushan (1989).
