Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan (born 7 August 1925) is an Indian geneticist and international administrator, renowned for his leading role in India's "Green Revolution," a program under which high-yield varieties of wheat and rice seedlings were planted in the fields of poor farmers.
Swaminathan is known as "Indian Father of Green Revolution" for his leadership and success in introducing and further developing high-yielding varieties of wheat in India. He is the founder and chairman of the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation.[1] His stated vision is to rid the world of hunger and poverty.[2] Swaminathan is an advocate of moving India to sustainable development, especially using environmentally sustainable agriculture, sustainablefood security and the preservation of biodiversity, which he calls an "evergreen revolution."[3]
From 1972 to 1979 he was director general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. He was Principal Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture from 1979 to 1980. He served as Director General of the International Rice Research Institute (1982–88) and became president of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in 1988.
In 1999, Time magazine placed him in the 'Time 20' list of most influential Asian people of the 20th century.
On the occasion of the presentation of the First World Food Prize to Swaminathan in October 1987, Javier Perez de Cuellar, Secretary General of the United Nations, wrote: "Dr. Swaminathan is a living legend. His contributions to Agricultural Science have made an indelible mark on food production in India and elsewhere in the developing world. By any standards, he will go into the annals of history as a world scientist of rare distinction."
Swaminathan has been described by the United Nations Environment Programme as "the Father of Economic Ecology."
He was one of three from India included in Time magazine's 1999 list of the "20 most influential Asian people of the 20th century," the other two being Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore.
Swaminathan was the featured speaker at the 2006 Norman E. Borlaug International Symposium in Des Moines, Iowa on, 19 October 2006. He was sponsored by Humanities Iowa, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Swaminathan presented the "Third Annual Governor's Lecture" and spoke on "THE GREEN REVOLUTION REDUX: Can we replicate the single greatest period of food production in all human history?" about the cultural and social foundations of the Green Revolution in India and the role of historic leaders in India, such as Mahatma Gandhi, in inspiring the Green Revolution there by calling for the alleviation of widespread hunger. He talked about the links between Gandhi and the great Iowa scientist George Washington Carver.
Swaminathan is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Italian Academy of Sciences.