Ralph W. Cummings

Ralph W. Cummings was an American soil scientist and agricultural administrator who became the founding Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, in Hyderabad, India, leading the newly created institute from 1972 to 1977. Born in 1911 in Reidsville, North Carolina, and holding a doctorate in soil science from Ohio State University earned in 1938, he taught at Cornell University from 1937 to 1942 before heading North Carolina State College's Agronomy Department from 1942 to 1947, and he subsequently spent years with the Rockefeller Foundation directing agricultural development programs in India and Peru. After his ICRISAT tenure he chaired the Technical Advisory Committee of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, CGIAR, from 1977 to 1982, and he later held leadership roles with the Ford Foundation and the International Irrigation Management Institute; he died in 2001.