John Boyd Orr, 1st Baron Boyd-Orr

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John Boyd Orr, 1st Baron Boyd-Orr

John Boyd-Orr, 1st Baron Boyd-Orr (born September 23, 1880 in Kilmaurs , Scotland , † June 25, 1971 in Newton near Brechin ), was a Scottish doctor, biologist and politician. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1949 .

life and work

Education and academic career

Born in 1880, John Boyd Orr was the son of a farmer in Kilmaurs, Scotland. After completing his schooling, he studied philosophy at the University of Glasgow and then became a religion teacher. He then studied medicine and natural sciences and worked as a doctor. He mainly dealt with questions of metabolism and nutrition. From 1914 he worked at the Rowett Institute for Animal Nutrition he founded at the University of Aberdeen. He headed the institute until 1945 and over the years it has become the most important research institution on metabolic physiology in Great Britain. With a brief interruption due to the First World War , in which he worked as a medical officer, he devoted himself primarily to research. A central question was the relationship between the quality of the herbivores' food and thus their pastures and the quality of the meat.

He consistently applied the knowledge he gained in his research, whereby he was primarily interested in improving people's quality of life. He was particularly committed to improving children's quality of life as they grow. On the basis of his results, he implemented reforms in school meals. He also campaigned for an even and fair distribution of food in the poorer sections of the population. In addition, his work served to research the mineral metabolism . He also wanted to counteract constantly fluctuating prices and uncontrolled overproduction.

John Boyd Orr was used as an expert on several commissions of the British Department of Agriculture and briefly headed the royal bureau for animal nutrition. On February 20, 1935 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor in recognition of his scientific work . Since 1924 he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

John Boyd Orr was Professor of Agriculture at the University of Aberdeen from 1942 to 1945. From 1946 he became Chancellor of the University of Glasgow .

International and political work

John Boyd Orr also campaigned for the implementation of his findings on nutrition and agriculture on an international level. He became a member of the nutrition committee of the League of Nations and wanted to promote the establishment of a world food association. He saw eliminating hunger in the world as a way of building lasting peace.

Of 13 April 1945 to 16 October 1946, he served as MP for the Combined Scottish Universities member of the British House of Commons .

In 1945 John Boyd Orr became the first director general of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization . In 1946 he resigned this post again and justified this with the attitude of the USA towards his demands. With their refusals, these had brought the plans down. Even after his departure, however, he repeatedly warned of a world catastrophe caused by poverty and hunger. In 1948 he was elected President of the International Peace Council and the World Alliance of Peace Organizations by the World Democratic Union in Luxembourg . He saw his demands for the sustainable eradication of hunger as part of the peace work, and above all demanded a comprehensive provision of loans and technical support for poor nations to build up modern agriculture, as well as the supply of food.

On March 9, 1949, the same year in which he received the Nobel Peace Prize, he was raised to the hereditary nobility of the Peerage of the United Kingdom and thus to British with the title Baron Boyd-Orr , of Brechin Mearn in the County of Angus Upper House appointed, in 1952 he took over the chairmanship of the World Economic Conference in Moscow . In 1971 he died in Newton, Scotland.

He left two daughters from his marriage to Elizabeth Pearson Callum. His only son died in World War II in 1941. In the absence of male descendants, his title of nobility expired on his death.

Fonts

  • (together with Edith Tudor-Hart ): Food and the people . Pilot. Pr., London 1943
    • Food and People [Translated from the English by Viktor Brod ]. New Austria, Vienna 1948
  • The White Man's Dilemma . Georg Allen and Unwin Ltd, London 1953
    • Are only the rich fed? The white man's fateful hour . German edition edited a. with a foreword by Hans-Joachim Riecke . Translated from English by HJ Weseloh. Econ-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1954
  • Knaur's Book of Nutrition . Translator and editor Heinz Woltereck . Droemer, Munich - Zurich 1958.

literature

  • Bernhard Kupfer: Lexicon of Nobel Prize Winners. Patmos Verlag, Düsseldorf 2001, p. 388f.

Web links

Commons : John Boyd Orr, 1st Baron Boyd-Orr  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Knights and Dames at Leigh Rayment's Peerage
  2. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed March 26, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Boyd-Orr, John, 1st Baron Boyd-Orr
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Boyd-Orr, Sir John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish doctor, biologist, politician and Nobel Peace Prize winner
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Kilmaurs , Scotland
DATE OF DEATH June 25, 1971
Place of death Newton at Brechin