M. S. Swaminathan

Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan (7 August 1925 – 28 September 2023) was an Indian geneticist and plant breeder, administrator and humanitarian. Swaminathan was a global leader of the green revolution. He has been called the main architect of the green revolution in India for his leadership and role in introducing and further developing high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice. Swaminathan's collaborative scientific efforts with Norman Borlaug, spearheading a mass movement with farmers and other scientists and backed by public policies, saved India and Pakistan from certain famine-like conditions in the 1960s. His leadership as director general of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines was instrumental in his being awarded the first World Food Prize in 1987, recognized as one of the highest honours in the field of agriculture. The United Nations Environment Programme has called him "the Father of Economic Ecology". He was recently conferred the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award of the Republic of India, in 2024. Swaminathan contributed basic research related to potato, wheat, and rice, in areas such as cytogenetics, ionizing radiation, and radiosensitivity. He was a president of the Pugwash Conferences and the International Union for Conservation of Nature. In 1999, he was one of three Indians, along with Gandhi and Tagore, on Time's list of the 20 most influential Asian people of the 20th century. Swaminathan received numerous awards and honours, including the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, the Ramon Magsaysay Award, and the Albert Einstein World Science Award. Swaminathan chaired the National Commission on Farmers in 2004, which recommended far-reaching ways to improve India's farming system. He was the founder of an eponymous research foundation. He coined the term "Evergreen Revolution" in 1990 to describe his vision of "productivity in perpetuity without associated ecological harm". He was nominated to the Parliament of India for one term between 2007 and 2013. During his tenure he put forward a bill for the recognition of women farmers in India.

Life

Early life and education Swaminathan was born in a Tamil Brahmin family in Kumbakonam, Madras Presidency, on 7 August 1925. He was the second son of general surgeon M. K. Sambasivan and Parvati Thangammal Sambasivan. At age 11, after his father's death, Swaminathan was looked after by his father's brother. Swaminathan’s parents were second-generation descendants of migrants from Thanjavur, and were natives of Mankombu, Alappuzha, Kerala. This was the reason he was carrying Mankombu in his name. Swaminathan was educated at a local high school and later at the Catholic Little Flower High School in Kumbakonam, from which he matriculated at age 15. From childhood, he interacted with farming and farmers; his extended family grew rice, mangoes, and coconut, and later expanded into other areas such as coffee. He saw the impact that fluctuations in the price of crops had on his family, including the devastation that weather and pests could cause to crops as well as incomes. His parents wanted him to study medicine. With that in mind, he started off his higher education with zoology. But when he witnessed the impacts of the Bengal famine of 1943 during the Second World War and shortages of rice throughout the sub-continent, he decided to devote his life to ensuring India had enough food. Despite his family background, and belonging to an era where medicine and engineering were considered much more prestigious, he chose agriculture. He went on to finish his undergraduate degree in zoology at Maharaja's College in Trivandrum, Kerala (now known as University College, Thiruvananthapuram at the University of Kerala). He then studied at University of Madras (Madras Agricultural College, now the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University) from 1940 to 1944 and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Agricultural Science. During this time he was also taught by Cotah Ramaswami, a professor of agronomy. In 1947 he moved to the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in New Delhi to study genetics and plant breeding. He obtained a post-graduate degree with high distinction in cytogenetics in 1949. His research focused on the genus Solanum, with specific attention to the potato. Social pressures resulted in him competing in the examinations for civil services, through which he was selected to the Indian Police Service. At the same time, an opportunity for him arose in the agriculture field in the form of a UNESCO fellowship in genetics in the Netherlands. He chose genetics.

Netherlands and Europe Swaminathan was a UNESCO fellow at the Wageningen Agricultural University's Institute of Genetics in the Netherlands for eight months. The demand for potatoes during the Second World War resulted in deviations in age-old crop rotations. This caused golden nematode infestations in certain areas such as reclaimed agricultural lands. Swaminathan worked on adapting genes to provide resilience against such parasites, as well as cold weather. To this effect, the research succeeded. Ideologically the university influenced his later scientific pursuits in India with respect to food production. During this time he also made a visit to the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in war-torn Germany; this would later influence him deeply as during his next visit, a decade later, he saw that the Germans had transformed Germany, both infrastructurally and energetically.

United Kingdom In 1950, he moved to study at the Plant Breeding Institute of the University of Cambridge School of Agriculture. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1952 for his thesis "Species Differentiation, and the Nature of Polyploidy in certain species of the genus Solanum – section Tuberarium". The following December he stayed for a week with F.L. Brayne, a former Indian Civil Service officer, whose experiences with rural India influenced Swaminathan in his later years.

United States of America Swaminathan then spent 15 months in the United States. He accepted a post-doctoral research associateship at the University of Wisconsin's Laboratory of Genetics to help set up a USDA potato research station. The laboratory at the time had Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg on its faculty. His associateship ended in December 1953. Swaminathan turned down a faculty position in order to continue to make a difference back home in India.

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