Per Pinstrup-Andersen, the 2001 World Food Prize laureate and a professor at Cornell, has been named "the most important Dane in the world" in combating poverty in developing countries by an independent panel for Udvikling (Development), Denmark's leading development magazine.

Pinstrup-Andersen is the J. Thomas Clark Professor of Entrepreneurship@Cornell, the H.E. Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy, and a professor of nutritional sciences and of applied economics and management in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell.

He garnered the World Food Prize for initiating a research effort that enabled several governments to reform their food subsidy programs and dramatically increase food availability to severely impoverished people.

He is past chairman of the Science Council of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and past president of the American Agricultural Economics Association. He served 10 years as the International Food Policy Research Institute's director general and seven years as an economist at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, Colombia.

Pinstrup-Andersen's publications include "Seeds of Contention," published in five languages, and more than 500 other publications, including two books on international trade and ethics and hunger published in 2007.