<figure class="image-550">
<img src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-29/gregorio-velasquez-2.webp" alt="Black-and-white portrait photograph of an elderly Dr. Gregorio Tiongson Velasquez, wearing glasses and an embroidered barong tagalog." loading="lazy" />
<figcaption>Dr. Gregorio Tiongson Velasquez (1901–1989) in his later years, the Filipino botanist honored as the Father of Philippine Phycology and named National Scientist of the Philippines in 1982.</figcaption>
</figure>

<h2>
Early Life and Education in Bulacan
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Velasquez received his early schooling in Calumpit before completing his secondary education at Bulacan High School, graduating in 1920. He then enrolled at the <a href="/kauswagan/articles/1188/today-in-philippine-history-june-18-1908-the-university-of-the-philippines-was-established" class="news_link">University of the Philippines</a>, where he supported his studies by working as a laboratory assistant in the Department of Botany - one of a handful of young Filipinos then helping build the university's natural-science collections almost from scratch. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Botany in 1925 and a Master of Science in the same field in 1931.
</p>
<p>
Velasquez subsequently pursued advanced graduate work at the University of Michigan in the United States, completing a second master's degree in 1937 and a Ph.D. in 1939. His doctoral research was conducted under William Randolph Taylor, one of the most prominent American phycologists of the twentieth century and a leading authority on marine algae. It was under Taylor's guidance that Velasquez's academic focus narrowed specifically to phycology - the scientific study of algae - a field that had, until then, received almost no dedicated attention in the Philippines.
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<h2>
Building a Discipline: Career at the University of the Philippines
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Rather than remain in the United States, where opportunities for a freshly minted Ph.D. were considerably better funded, Velasquez returned home to the University of the Philippines. He rejoined the Department of Botany, this time as an assistant instructor, and rose steadily through the academic ranks over the following decades. He was named Professor of Botany in 1958 and later became Chairman of the Department of Botany. When he retired in November 1967, the university conferred on him the title of Professor Emeritus in recognition of more than three decades of teaching and research.
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<p>
Throughout his career, Velasquez combined classroom teaching with extensive fieldwork across the archipelago. He collected and studied algal specimens from Oriental Mindoro, eastern Palawan, Sulu, Batangas, and Bataan, documenting species across three major algal groups: the Euglenophyceae, the Chlorophyceae (green algae), and above all the Myxophyceae, the blue-green algae now classified by modern taxonomy as cyanobacteria. His sustained, systematic study of Philippine Myxophyceae - the first of its kind by a Filipino scientist - occupied more than thirty years of his working life and became the foundation on which the entire discipline of Philippine phycology was later built. Over his career he produced roughly 120 scientific papers, a body of work that brought Philippine algae to the attention of the international scientific community for the first time and demonstrated practical applications of his research, including the potential use of certain algae as a natural soil fertilizer for Philippine agriculture.
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Gregorio Velasquez: Father of Philippine Phycology

Discover Gregorio T. Velasquez, born Sept. 2, 1901 in Calumpit, Bulacan: pioneering botanist, National Scientist, and founder of Philippine phycology.

September 2, 1901: Gregorio Tiongson Velasquez was born in Calumpit, Bulacan