Photo by Tom Campbell

Conducting aseptic workshops, such as this PepsiCo gathering, is one way Nelson remains in contact with industry representatives.

Phil Nelson was in his second-floor office in the northwest corner of the Food Science Building when his phone rang. He was teaching at Purdue’s aseptic processing workshop, just as he had every spring since he founded it 24 years ago, even though he now has retired as department head and moved to Michigan.

The man on the other end of the phone began quizzing Nelson about the World Food Prize.

“This guy started talking,” Nelson recalls of that day in May. “He started asking me all sorts of questions about the World Food Prize: Was I familiar with the prize and did I know about the award ceremony held each year in Iowa.”

The questions were just vague enough to slightly annoy Nelson.

“I thought he was hitting me up to buy a couple of tickets,” Nelson says.

Turns out, he was. As the guest of honor. The man on the phone was Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation.

“Well, I think you should plan on coming out to Des Moines this fall,” Quinn said, “because you are the 2007 laureate of the World Food Prize.”

“I think I need to sit down,” was all Nelson could muster.

As he took a seat, Quinn and other World Food Prize representatives listening to Nelson’s reaction on a speakerphone in Iowa vacated their seats to give the retired head of Purdue’s Department of Food Science a standing ovation.

“I was overwhelmed,” Nelson says. “I think I still am.”

The World Food Prize, according to the foundation’s Web site, “is the foremost international award recognizing — without regard to race, religion, nationality or political beliefs — the achievements of individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world.”

The $250,000 award has been presented annually since 1986, when Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug created it. He envisioned it as agriculture’s equal to the Nobel Prize. Its board members include Borlaug and former presidents George Bush and Jimmy Carter. Nelson is the first winner cited for work in the post-production area of agricultural research.

“This is the first time it has gone to a person in food science,” boasts Randy Woodson, Purdue’s Glenn W. Sample Dean of Agriculture. “Previously, it had gone to people who had enhanced food production. But Phil is the first post-production researcher to win the award. We at Purdue have long recognized the importance of Dr. Nelson’s research. Certainly, industry has known it, too. Now, with the World Food Prize, the entire world will recognize it as well.”

For a listing of previous winners, visit www.worldfoodprize.org/laureates/Laureates.htm.