Fr Leo D’Souza Collection

Fr Leo D’Souza, a scientist and former Principal and Rector of St Aloysius College, Mangalore, was born in 1932 in Mangalore. He received his primary and secondary education at St Aloysius College in Mangalore. He decided to become a Jesuit priest and was trained for this in Calicut, Shembaganur and Trichy. At St Joseph’s College in Tiruchirapalli, he completed his BSc and MSc in Botany. He then left for Frankfurt, Germany, for further Jesuit training and was ordained a priest in 1967. While in Germany he pursued his doctoral studies at Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, in Cologne. After he completed his PhD in 1970, he did a year of post-doctoral study in Germany. Then he returned to India, as a lecturer at St Joseph’s College, Bangalore, from 1973 to 1980, during which time he set up his laboratory dedicated to cashew research. He moved his laboratory to St Aloysius College in Mangalore, when he returned there as Principal, a position he served until 1990, and then as Director of Research and Rector. His laboratory was one of the first 18 tissue culture laboratories recognised by the Department of Science and Technology in India. His team developed the very first tissue cultured cashew plant in 1990, as well as the micropropagation of other plants like Lagerstroemia flos reginae, Ailanthus malabarica, Millingtonia hortensis, as well as other medicinal plants and ferns. It was during Fr Leo D’Souza’s principalship that the college finally began admitting girls.