The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) is mourn­ing the pass­ing of Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor Bald­win Mootoo, a pi­o­neer­ing aca­d­e­m­ic whose ca­reer was deeply wo­ven in­to the in­sti­tu­tion’s his­to­ry and growth.

Mootoo’s jour­ney with UWI be­gan in 1956 when he en­rolled at the Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of the West In­dies in Mona, Ja­maica. That same year, he achieved a mile­stone by be­com­ing the first re­cip­i­ent of a PhD from the new­ly in­de­pen­dent UWI, mark­ing a defin­ing mo­ment in the uni­ver­si­ty’s tran­si­tion from its af­fil­i­a­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don.

In 1971, Mootoo joined the De­part­ment of Chem­istry at the St. Au­gus­tine cam­pus. Over the next 25 years, he held sev­er­al lead­er­ship roles, in­clud­ing Head of De­part­ment, Cam­pus Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Nat­ur­al Sci­ences, Pro Vice-Chan­cel­lor for Re­search, and Deputy Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal. His tenure co­in­cid­ed with the ex­pan­sion of UWI in­to a re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tion with mul­ti­ple cam­pus­es, and he played a cen­tral role in ad­vanc­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive re­search in nat­ur­al prod­ucts chem­istry across the Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.