Views from an intellectual giant

Last March 6, I attended the conferment of the Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, to Emil Q. Javier, PhD, at the historic Baker Hall inside the University of the Philippines Los Banos (UPLB) campus. A few weeks before that, I was half-jokingly needling him about having a big celebration when he had already attained the highest accolade as the country’s National Scientist. The conversation took place in one of the tennis courts of UPLB as Javier is still an active tennis player at the amazing age of 80 years old.

At the UPLB campus, we treat Javier as a statesman of the university. He was the founder and youngest head of the Institute of Plant Breeding, the second and the youngest chancellor that UPLB ever had, the youngest minister of Science and Technology during the Marcos administration, and the first UPLB alumnus to become UP president during the Ramos administration. He headed several international agricultural research organizations, foremost of which is the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). CGIAR supervises the operations of international agricultural research institutions all over the world, including that of the International Rice Research Institute based at the Los Banos campus.