Science and Technology Medals Awarded

An anonymous reader writes "The Boston Globe is reporting that President Bush awarded science and technology achievement medals today to 15 laureates. The list of medal winners includes those who have done work that has 'revolutionized organ transplants, led to development of global positioning systems, and helped feed millions around the world.' "

Comments

Re:vague....

[Coryoth]

Seems that they're REALLY filtering the science news for the masses these days...

The quote you cite is actually pretty much straight from the NSF announcement of the awards, so the dumbing down happened at that level, not from the newspaper. I had a quick skim through his recently published papers (as in titles and MathSciNet reviews) and while he is obviously doing some interesting work, apparently mostly in algebraic and differential topology, I couldn't easily discern what new fields he's created, nor what unexpected connections he's made - so it indeed would have been nice if the summary had included just a little more information clarifying that. I'm honestly curious now - can anyone provide a quick overview of his more important contributions?

Jedidiah.

Congrats, Norman Borlaug...

[daVinci1980]

You don't get nearly the recognition you deserve. Since your research in the 40s, 50s and 60s, you have saved over a billion people. There's pretty much no other person on earth who can claim to have saved a billion people with their discoveries. In fact, arguably Norman Borlaug has saved more people from death than any person in history, past, present or possibly even towards the future.

Norman E. Borlaug is my hero, and he should be yours, too.

There was a great episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! that covered Dr. Borlaug's work. I highly recommend it for a watch, if you have the chance.

From Wikiquote, a quote by Penn Jillette about Norman Borlaug:

"At a time when doom-sayers were hopping around saying everyone was going to starve, Norman was working. He moved to Mexico and lived among the people there until he figured out how to improve the output of the farmers. So that saved a million lives. Then he packed up his family and moved to India, where in spite of a war with Pakistan, he managed to introduce new wheat strains that quadrupled their food output. So that saved another million. You get it? But he wasn't done. He did the same thing with a new rice in China. He's doing the same thing in Afica -- as much of Africa as he's allowed to visit. When he won the Nobel Prize in 1970, they said he had saved a billion people. That's BILLION! Carl Sagan BILLION with a B! And most of them were a different race from him. Norman is the greatest human being, and you probably never heard of him."