Henry Beachell
Henry Beachell | |
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Born | (1906-09-21)September 21, 1906 Waverly, Nebraska, U.S. |
Died | December 13, 2006(2006-12-13) (aged 100) Pearland, Texas, U.S. |
Alma mater | University of Nebraska–Lincoln (B.S. 1930) Kansas State University (M.S. 1933) |
Awards | World Food Prize[1] Japan Prize[2] |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Plant breeding |
Thesis | The inheritance of resistance to leaf rust and bunt, and of other characters in the wheat cross, Tenmarq X Minturki (1933) |
Academic advisors | John H. Parker |
Henry Monroe "Hank" Beachell (September 21, 1906 – December 13, 2006) was an American plant breeder. His research led to the development of hybrid rice cultivars that saved millions of people around the world from starvation.
Born in Waverly, Nebraska, Beachell and his family moved to a corn and wheat farm in western Nebraska. In 1930 he earned a bachelor's degegree in agronomy from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where he was a member of the FarmHouse fraternity.[3] After obtaining a Master's degree at Kansas State University, Beachell worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Texas. There, he created nine rice varieties, which eventually accounted for more than 90 percent of the U.S. long-grain rice production. He went to International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in 1963 after his retirement from the DOA. He created a high-yielding rice variety IR8 in 1964, based on the previous work by Peter Jennings (no relations to the US journalists). IR8 was officially released by IRRI in 1966.[4] It dramatically increased the yields of Asian rice from 1 or 2 ton per hectare to 4 or 5 tons per hectare.[1] It played a significant part in the Green Revolution.
Beachell has been called the most important person in rice improvement in the world.[5] As farmers planted higher yielding rice, nutrition improved in many Asian countries, and farmers increased their incomes. Beachell was awarded a honorary doctorate from the University of Nebraska in 1972.[6] Beachell has received many international awards, including the 1987 Japan Prize[2] and 1996 World Food Prize.[1] As a centenarian, Beachell consulted with RiceTec, the only commercial hybrid rice-breeding program in the U.S, up until his death.
References
- ^ a b c World Food Prize Foundation 1996 Laureate: Beachell and Khush
- ^ a b Laureates of the Japan Prize. japanprize.jp
- ^ FarmHouse International Fraternity: List of Master Builders and accomplishments Archived 2013-02-09 at the Wayback Machine. Farmhouse.org. Retrieved on 2016-05-09.
- ^ The Breeding History of IR8
- ^ Payne, Bill; Ryan, John (January 2010). "Henry M. "Hank" Beachell —Rice for the World". The International Dimension of the American Society of Agronomy: Past and Future. ACSESS publications. p. 16. doi:10.2134/2010.internationaldimension.profile1. ISBN 978-0-89118-193-4. ISSN 2165-9842.
- ^ "Dr. Henry Monroe "Hank" Beachell Obituary (2006) Lincoln Journal Star".
External links
- RiceTec News Release on the occasion of Dr. Beachell's 100th birthday
- Texas A&M News Release regarding the 1990 World Food Prize
Honorary titles | ||
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Preceded by | World Food Prize 1996 | Succeeded by |
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- John R. Pierce / Ephraim Katchalski-Katzir (1985)
- David Turnbull / Willem J. Kolff (1986)
- Henry Beachell / Gurdev Khush / Theodore Maiman (1987)
- Georges Vendryes / Donald Henderson / Isao Arita / Frank Fenner / Luc Montagnier / Robert Gallo (1988)
- Frank Sherwood Rowland / Elias James Corey (1989)
- Marvin Minsky / W. Jason Morgan / Dan McKenzie / Xavier Le Pichon (1990)
- Jacques-Louis Lions / John J. Wild (1991)
- Gerhard Ertl / Ernest John Christopher Polge (1992)
- Frank Press / Kary B. Mullis (1993)
- William Hayward Pickering / Arvid Carlsson (1994)
- Nick Holonyak Jr. / Edward F. Knipling (1995)
- Charles K. Kao / Masao Ito (1996)
- Takashi Sugimura / Bruce Ames / Joseph Engelberger / Hiroyuki Yoshikawa (1997)
- Leo Esaki / Jozef Schell / Marc Van Montagu (1998)
- W. Wesley Peterson / Jack L. Strominger / Don Craig Wiley (1999)
- Ian McHarg / Kimishige Ishizaka (2000)
- John B. Goodenough / Timothy R. Parsons (2001)
- Tim Berners-Lee / Anne McLaren / Andrzej Tarkowski (2002)
- Benoit Mandelbrot / James A. Yorke / Seiji Ogawa (2003)
- Kenichi Honda / Akira Fujishima / Keith J. Sainsbury / John H. Lawton (2004)
- Makoto Nagao / Masatoshi Takeichi / Erkki Ruoslahti (2005)
- John Houghton / Akira Endo (2006)
- Albert Fert / Peter Grünberg / Peter Shaw Ashton (2007)
- Vint Cerf / Robert E. Kahn / Victor A. McKusick (2008)
- Dennis Meadows / David E. Kuhl (2009)
- Shun-ichi Iwasaki / Peter Vitousek (2010)
- Ken Thompson / Dennis Ritchie / Tadamitsu Kishimoto / Toshio Hirano (2011)
- Janet Rowley / Brian Druker / Nicholas Lydon / Masato Sagawa (2012)
- C. Grant Willson / Jean Fréchet / John Frederick Grassle (2013)
- Yasuharu Suematsu / C. David Allis (2014)
- Yutaka Takahasi / Theodore Friedmann / Alain Fischer (2015)
- Hideo Hosono / Steven D. Tanksley (2016)
- Emmanuelle Charpentier / Jennifer Doudna / Adi Shamir (2017)
- Akira Yoshino / Max Dale Cooper / Jacques Miller (2018)
- Yoshio Okamoto / Rattan Lal (2019)
- Robert G. Gallager / Svante Pääbo (2020)
- Martin A. Green / Bert Vogelstein / Robert A. Weinberg (2021)
- Katalin Karikó / Drew Weissman / Christopher Field (2022)
- Masataka Nakazawa / Kazuo Hagimoto / Gero Miesenböck / Karl Deisseroth (2023)
- Brian Hoskins / John Michael Wallace / Ronald M. Evans (2024)