How M. S. Swaminathan Improved International Science at the U. S. National Academy of Sciences

Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan was a leader with immense vision and abilities. I first met him in 1997, when he and I were recruited by the World Bank to serve as the co-chairs of the Science and Strategy half of a major review of the famous Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (GCIAR), composed of 16 public sector laboratories spread around the world. During the next year, I spent the equivalent of about six weeks of full-time effort working with Dr. Swaminathan on our part of the report, including the nine 14-hour days that we spent together in London in September 1998 for an intensive joint writing session with our two secretaries to complete it, as a critical October deadline loomed (Alberts 2005).