Gabriela Soto Laveaga
Professor of the History of Science and Antonio Madero Professor for the Study of Mexico at Harvard University
The World in a Wheat Field
Mexico, Science, and the Challenge of Ending Global Hunger
In the mid-twentieth century, researchers at an experimental station in Sonora’s Yaqui Valley designed high-yielding wheat seeds with the promise that increasing crop productivity would end world hunger. This is the history of what that promise cost, told from the land it remade and the farmers, seeds, and Mexican science the standard account leaves out.
Books
The World in a Wheat Field
University of California Press, November 2026
Jungle Laboratories
Duke University Press, 2009
“Deeply researched, critical but compassionate, and beautifully written, this will undoubtedly become a touchstone reference.”
“Dispels the fables technocrats tell and offers an intimate, human story of development and resistance reaching from Mexico to the Punjab.”
Recognition
Selected honors. More fellowships and awards on the About page.
Exhibiting Excellence Prize, British Society for the History of Science
Elected member, Academia Mexicana de la Historia
Dibner Distinguished Fellow, The Huntington Library
Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
Robert K. Merton Best Book Prize for Jungle Laboratories