Profile:

New Regional Representative to the Council of the Twelve

Dr. Nyle C. Brady is Director of the International Rice Research Institute with head offices at Los Ba§os, Laguna. Prior to his assuming the responsibilities of the directorship of IRRI, he was Associate Dean and Director of Research, New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station, Cornell University. From December 1963 to September 1965, Dr. Brady was the Director of Science and Education in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He served as the Secretary’s chief science officer and coordinated the research and educational activities of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Dr. Brady attended elementary and secondary schools in Manassa, Colorado. He holds a B.S. degree from Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, and a Ph.D. in agronomy from North Carolina State College, Raleigh, North Carolina.

After receiving his Ph.D. in 1947, he became an Assistant Professor of Soil Science at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. In 1950 he was promoted to Associate Professor; in 1952 to Professor; in 1953–63 he served as Head of the Department of Agronomy; in 1959 (on 7-months leave) he served as Assistant to the Director of Agricultural Relations, Tennessee Valley Authority.

Dr. Brady has been on five missions to the Philippines—the first of which was an 18-month assignment at the University of the Philippines. He served as a member of a team, financed by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, to develop a long-range plan for the College of Agriculture at the University of the Philippines. He has also had short-term assignments in Sri Lanka, India, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Honduras. He has visited the Soviet Union and Rumania and China. He served as a member of a technical advisory committee for the Ford Foundation’s agricultural program in India.

In 1965, Dr. Brady served as a member of the Environmental Pollution Panel of the President’s Science Advisory Committee. In 1966, he was a member of the World Food Supply Panel of the President’s Science Advisory Committee. From 1968–71 Dr. Brady was Chairman of the Agricultural Board, National Academy of Sciences. He was also a member of the Executive Committee, Division of Biology and Agriculture, National Academy of Sciences. He was also a member of the Panels on Environmental Quality, and Chemicals and Health of the President’s Science Advisory Committee.

Dr. Brady was a consultant for U.S. AID sponsored Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Secretariat Project on Agriculture, a member of the U.S. National Air Quality of Criterion Advisory Committee, and Chairman of the U.S. AID Central Research Advisory Committee. He served for two years as a member of the Board on Science and Technology of the National Academy of Sciences Foreign Secretary’s Office.

Dr. Brady was President of the Soil Science Society of America in 1964, and Vice President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Section on Agriculture in 1966. At the Eighth International Soil Science Congress in 1964 in Bucharest, he was appointed Vice President of Commission IV of the International Society of Soil Science. He is a Fellow and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science as well as of the American Society of Agronomy. He holds membership in the American Institute of Biological Sciences, American Association of University Professors, International Soil Science Society, Soil Science Society of America, American Society of Agronomy, and Sigma XI. In 1952 he received the Outstanding Professor Award, New York State College of Agriculture, and in 1966, the James E. Talmage Scientific Achievement Award, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

For five years Dr. Brady was editor-in-chief of the Proceedings of the Soil Science Society of America, and is presently serving as editor for Advances in Agronomy.

He is co-author of perhaps the most widely used textbook on soil science in the United States, The Nature and Properties of Soils currently being revised for the eighth edition. He has also written many research papers. His major research interests are in plant nutrition, especially as related to root-zone temperatures.

Dr. Brady was born in Manassa, Colorado, October 25, 1920. His wife is the former Martha Cornum of Sanford, Colorado and they have two sons and two daughters. Both sons have completed their Ph.D. degrees in biochemistry at Cornell.

Dr. Nyle C. Brady; Sis. Martha C. Brady