John Boyd Orr

Born 23 September 1880 in Scotland, John Boyd Orr moved from teaching to medicine to biology, eventually pioneering nutritional physiology at a time when hunger was treated as inevitable. His research demonstrated that malnutrition wasn't just a health problem but a political one, and in 1945 he became the first Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, leveraging science to reshape how the world thought about food security. Knighted in 1935, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1949 for that work. He spent his later years leading peace organizations and co-founding the World Academy of Art and Science in 1960, serving as its first president until his death on 25 June 1971.