M.S. Swaminathan

M.S. Swaminathan is a Member of Parliament in India’s Rajya Sabha (upper house) and the founder and Chairman of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai (Madras), India. A plant geneticist by training, he is widely referred to as the scientific leader of Asia’s Green Revolution for his leadership in introducing and further developing high-yielding varieties of wheat in India. He has been acclaimed by TIME magazine as one of the twenty most influential Asians of the 20th century. He received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 1971, the Albert Einstein World Science Award in 1986, and the first World Food Prize in 1987. He is a member of the Royal Society of London and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.