Of all the notables who died in 2009, the one who most changed the world could have walked down any Main Street USA without causing a stir.

Scientist Norman Borlaug, who died Sept. 12 at age 95, developed crops that enabled Third World farmers to wrest more food from their land. His "green revolution" was credited with averting global famine _ and won him a Nobel Peace Prize.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and his sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver were born into America's pre-eminent political family and spent decades living up to its tradition of service.

Michael Jackson helped create his own family dynasty, this one rooted in show business, as the lead singer for The Jackson 5 when he was just a child. He grew up to become one of entertainment's most influential and controversial figures as the King of Pop, and his death at age 50 was as mystifying as his life.

They are just four of the men and women of achievement who died in 2009.

The political world said goodbye to Jack Kemp, Claiborne Pell, Robert McNamara, Jody Powell and writers William Safire, Irving Kristol and Robert Novak.

Overseas, we lost two courageous dissidents who went on to lead their countries _ Corazon Aquino of the Philippines and Kim Dae-jung of South Korea. In death, another dissident, Iran's Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, spurred others to mount new protests.

In the arts, those who died in 2009 include groundbreaking choreographer Merce Cunningham; photographer Irving Penn; painter Andrew Wyeth; and novelist John Updike.

We relived historic tragedies as we lost the last Titanic survivor, the last leader of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, a veteran who fought in the trenches during World War I, and a polio victim who spent more than 60 years in an iron lung.

Scholars John Hope Franklin and Claude Levi-Strauss took history and anthropology into new directions. Teacher-turned-author Frank McCourt wrote movingly of his painful growing-up. Oral Roberts preached to millions.

Broadcast journalism lost founding fathers Walter Cronkite and Don Hewitt. TV also brought us Ed McMahon, the ultimate talk show sidekick; Bea Arthur, whose comic delivery hit home like a boxer's punch; and Farrah Fawcett, whose beauty launched a multitude of magazine covers.

We lost men named Chaplin and Freud and DiMaggio, who managed to excel in the shadow of their famous relatives.

The notorious killers Howard Unruh and Susan Atkins died, both having spent much of their lives in custody. Abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, whose clinic was a longtime site of protests, and NFL quarterback Steve McNair were shot to death.