history
Starting in 1973, Yuan’s team bred the first commercial three-line hybrid rice, roughly doubling traditional yields. His varieties are now planted across South and Southeast Asia and are credited with feeding hundreds of millions of additional people.
culture
When Yuan died in May 2021, thousands lined the streets of Changsha in the rain for his funeral procession - a rare spontaneous public mourning in modern China. He is often paired in headlines with 钟南山 as a national symbol of scientists serving the public good.
