Rosen, Joseph A.

Rosen, Joseph A. (1878–1949) agronomist; born in Moscow, Russia. He was arrested in 1894 for being a revolutionary and was sent to Siberia. He escaped, eventually ending up in Michigan (1903), where he worked on a farm and enrolled at Michigan Agricultural College (1905). He wrote a series of articles on American agriculture for a Russian publication, a practice he continued until the Russian Revolution of 1917. In 1909 he gave his alma mater a pound of Russian rye seed; named Rosen rye in his honor, it became the predominant rye grown in the Midwest. In 1921 he joined Herbert Hoover's American Relief Administration, representing the Joint Distribution Committee of the American Jewish Committee. He introduced tractors to the Soviet Union and helped resettle thousands of Jewish farmers in the Ukraine and the Crimea.