We each receive one life of earth. What can a single person hope to accomplish during that single lifetime? Many have done great things. There have been political leaders, inventors, writers, explorers, scientists and engineers who have changed the world in significant ways.

But what if, on your tombstone, your epitaph read, “Saved hundreds of millions human lives, possibly more” ? That would certainly be an accomplishment worth talking about, and something for the rest of us to honor.

Such is the case of Dr. Norman Borlaug, as described in the New York Times:

Norman Borlaug, 95, Dies; Led Green Revolution

his work had a far-reaching impact on the lives of millions of people in developing countries. His breeding of high-yielding crop varieties helped to avert mass famines that were widely predicted in the 1960s, altering the course of history. Largely because of his work, countries that had been food deficient, like Mexico and India, became self-sufficient in producing cereal grains.

“More than any other single person of this age, he has helped provide bread for a hungry world,” the Nobel committee said in presenting him with the Peace Prize. “We have made this choice in the hope that providing bread will also give the world peace.”

His work changed the pattern of life in entire countries, and saved “hundreds of millions of lives.”

How did he save so many lives? He developed new plant strains that radically increased the amount of food that could be produced per acre. He worked primarily on staple crops like wheat and rice. He worked to improve these crops – for example by increasing disease resistance, or shrinking the length of the stalks in order to prevent lodging (a tall plant tends to fall over under the weight of increased grain). By making these improvements, and then doing the work to introduce the improved strains in often difficult areas, he increased food production. For example, wheat production in Mexico has increased by a factor of five between 1950 and 2000. According to this article:

During the mid-1960s, the Indian subcontinent was at war, and experiencing widespread famine and starvation, even though the US was making emergency shipments of millions of tons of grain, including over one fifth of its total wheat, to the region.[15] 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.[11]

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.”

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