Raymond C. Bushland

Raymond C. Bushland, born October 5, 1910, and died January 29, 1995, was an American entomologist with the United States Department of Agriculture who developed the sterile insect technique for controlling the New World screwworm, a parasite that had devastated cattle herds. He studied zoology and entomology at the University of South Dakota, earning his master's degree in 1934, and later received a doctorate from Kansas State University in 1953, and during the Second World War he also researched methods for controlling the lice that transmitted typhus. Working with colleague Edward F. Knipling, he helped develop the technique that eradicated the screwworm from Florida by 1958 and from the entire United States by 1982, and the two men shared the 1992 World Food Prize for the achievement; Bushland became director of the USDA's Metabolism and Radiation Research Laboratory in Fargo, North Dakota, in 1963 and retired in 1974.