Paul C. Mangelsdorf
July 20, 1899 - July 22, 1989
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Scientific Discipline: Plant, Soil, and Microbial Sciences Membership Type:
Emeritus
(elected 1945)
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Geneticist and plant breeder Paul C. Mangelsdorf focused much of his work on the hybridization and genetic history of corn. He found that hybridization between corn and its genetic derivatives resulted in an eclectic biodiversity unlike that of any other crop. He helped to develop a corn seed that required less time to process and a breed that grew perennially instead of annually, which made it useful and cost effective for farmers. He also took part in the Mexican Agricultural Program sponsored by the Rockefeller Institute, which aimed to increase food production and industrialize agriculture in Mexico through use of fertilizer, pesticides, and irrigation techniques. Mangelsdorf was a member of the initial research team to go to Mexico and gather data. Later the program would be implemented in other developing countries and renamed the Green Revolution.
Mangelsdorf graduated from Kansas State University and earned his ScD from Harvard University in 1925. He served as an assistant geneticist and plant breeder at the Texas Agricultural Experimental Station, where he served as director until 1940. He was a professor at Harvard from 1940 to 1968, and from 1945 to 1967 he served as director of the Harvard Botanical Museum. He continued to work on his experimentations in cross-pollination as a retired professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
