Luther Burbank.

American Horticulturist
1849-1926

Luther Burbank was the most well-known plant breeder of the Age of Agriculture. He was born March 7, 1849, in Lancaster, Massachusetts. He had little formal science training, but his efforts to better the human condition by improving useful plants made him a folk hero throughout the world. Burbank's work is said to have advanced the science of horticulture by several decades.

Burbank's first, and foremost, contribution is evidenced with every baked potato and french fry eaten today. At the age of twenty-four, Burbank discovered a seed ball on the normally sterile Early Rose potato. Inspired by English naturalist Charles Darwin's The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Burbank cultivated these seeds and used them to "build" the first white potato, the basis for the modern Burbank Russet Idaho potatoes.

In 1875, with $150 in proceeds from the sale of most of his potato...