The Most Important Person You've Never Heard Of

Nobel peace prize winning plant scientist Norman Borlaug:

He received the Nobel in 1970, primarily for his work in reversing the food shortages that haunted India and Pakistan in the 1960s. Perhaps more than anyone else, Borlaug is responsible for the fact that throughout the postwar era, except in sub-Saharan Africa, global food production has expanded faster than the human population, averting the mass starvations that were widely predicted -- for example, in the 1967 best seller Famine -- 1975! The form of agriculture that Borlaug preaches may have prevented a billion deaths.

A great example of how the market (or maybe in this case an individual scientist) can influence global history. Mr. Borlaug died a couple of years ago.