Platt, Arnold

Arnold Platt was educated at Olds and Vermilion Schools of Agriculture and at the University of Alberta where he earned a PhD in plant breeding and genetics. He was Head of Cereal Crop breeding at the Saskatchewan Experimental Station and gained international recognition in 1944 for helping to develop 'rescue' wheat. He was also a research assistant and field officer for the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA). Later he was President of Platt Farms Ltd, Arnold Platt Consultants Ltd, an employee of the United Farmers of Alberta, President of the Farmers Union of Alberta, Managing Director of Red Crow Ltd., Sundance Farms Ltd, and N. B. Farstad & Associates.

Platt was a member of the Alberta Institute of Agrologists, Agricultural Institute of Canada, Advisory Committee to the Canadian Wheat Board, Alberta Land Use Forum, the Ranchmen's Club, the Senate of the University of Calgary and the Board at the University of Alberta. He was a commissioner on the Royal Commission on Transportation (1959), a member of the Special Advisory Committee on Communal Property, and chairman of the Environmental Council of Alberta Panel on Water Management in the Oldman River Basin. He received the Alberta Achievement Award in 1972, was elected a Fellow of the Agricultural Institute of Canada, and was inducted into the Alberta Agriculture Hall of Fame in 1972. He and his first wife Donna had four children, Wayne, 1931- , Shirley (Deneka), 1935- , Joan, 1936-1942, and Margaret (Oikawa), 1944- . He later married Helen Roney, 1920-2012.

For further information see The Ordinary Genius : A Life of Arnold Platt / Kenneth Hoeppner. -- Edmonton : University of Alberta Press, 2007.