By TOM CAMPBELL

Photo by Tom Campbell

While Phil Nelson was putting the finishing touches on his Purdue career, his wife, Sue, was putting the finishing touches on their retirement home in northern Michigan. They have named the home "Bon Temps" which is French for "good times."

How many conversations can there be in a lifetime? Countless, ranging from the meaningless to the memorable. Maybe a million fall somewhere in between. A precious few can actually illuminate a career, like footlights strung along a garden path. Phil Nelson, BS '56, PhD '67, can remember three of those life-altering talks, albeit brief, that have delivered him to this, the apex of his career, as the winner of the 2007 World Food Prize.

Nelson, Purdue's Scholle Chair Professor in Food Processing and founder of Purdue's Department of Food Science, will receive the $250,000 award, called the Nobel Prize of agriculture, during an Oct. 18 ceremony in Des Moines, Iowa.

Nelson developed the technology to process large quantities of seasonal crops, such as tomatoes and oranges, that can be stored for long periods and transported in bulk to all corners of the world without losing nutritional value or taste. The technology, known as aseptic bulk storage and distribution, revolutionized global food trade.

Had any of the three conversations, acts in his personal play, not occurred, Nelson's life would have been different in ways even he cannot fathom. Certainly, Nelson had no idea of the impact each discussion would have on his life.

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In the summer of 1960, the Nelson master plan was much in need of revision. He had earned his Purdue degree in agriculture and returned home to Morristown, Ind., to the lofty position of plant manager of the family-owned tomato cannery, Blue River Packing Co.

But the tomato industry, having discovered the year-round growing conditions of an irrigated West Coast, was migrating away from the Midwest. More than 200 Indiana canneries were forced to close. Nelson's father, Brainard, did likewise, closing Blue River in 1958.

The backup plan called for Nelson to work on the family's 500-acre Meadowbrook Farm, raising hogs, corn and beans. By 1960, Nelson had seen a respiratory virus kill too many of his hogs. As the deaths rose, his spirits dropped.

"I saw him become an old man on that farm," says Sue, his wife of 51 years. "He seemed older then than he does now."

Their paths first crossed when she was a freshman and he was a junior and both were wandering the halls of the Purdue Union during her freshman orientation. That was in 1954. They’ve been together ever since.

But in that summer of 1960, the Nelsons plotted and planned what Sue would later call “the great escape.”

He had experience with animals and they both fondly remembered their days as undergraduates at Purdue. Why not apply to Purdue's School of Veterinary Medicine?

Enrollment had ended and the vet school was full. But administrators were willing to make a special case and accept Nelson as a student. In the summer of 1960, Sue landed a first-grade teaching position in Lafayette that would bring in $4,200. Phil came back to Purdue to secure housing for the fall semester and to talk with some faculty members. One discussion was with Norman Desrosier, a horticulture professor doing research in food processing.

Conversation I

“The Purdue vet school is great, don’t get me wrong,” Desrosier said. “And I think you would make a fine veterinarian. But are you sure that’s what you want to be for the rest of your life?”

Nelson thought back to desperate times on the farm, when nothing he did could keep his pigs from dying.

“I can get you an assistantship in the department that will pay you $1,200, so you won’t have to pay tuition,” Desrosier said. “I’m doing research on the protein value of algae, and I could use your help.”

“He made it sound really appealing. We were going to feed the world with algae. A one-car garage full of algae has as much protein as 100 acres of corn,” Nelson recalls. “And to us, the $1,200 assistantship was huge.”

It certainly didn’t take Nelson long to pack. His return-to-campus wardrobe consisted of a couple of shirts, two pairs of khaki slacks and one pair of shoes.

And at first, the transition was as difficult as, well, organic chemistry. He had, after all, been out of the academic environment for four years.

“I was working with sulfuric acid in the lab and I dropped a beaker and it broke, ruining my only pair of shoes and a pair of pants,” Nelson says. “Plus, I had to pay for what I broke, which was about $15.”