Peter Alcantara Pillai
19 October 1904 - 27 September 1964
founder of the Aquinas University (1954)

A brief biography.

Peter Alcantara Pillai (1904-1964) a man of remarkable intelligence, was born on 19 October 1904 to Jacob and Anna Pillai from Kayts, Jaffna, in Wennappuwa, a outpost on the west coast of the island. His father was a lowly paid teacher who could hardly support the family of five boys including Peter, the youngest. He began his schooling in Tamil at his father’s school.

His paternal grandfather was a sharecropper. Peter financed his education with scholarships obtaining MA, MSc, PhD, specialising in Physics and Maths, from the University of London (1927).

In 1929, he entered the novitiate of the Congregation of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (O.M.I.) in Belgium. He studied at the Oblate International Scholasticate and the Pontificia Università San Tommaso of the Dominicans in Rome (the Angelicum), and awarded a Doctorate in Philosophy in 1931. He was ordained a priest in 1934.

1936 - Returned to Ceylon, he was appointed to the staff of St. Peter’s College, and founded the Catholic Social Guild on 14 October.
1937 - January, he began “Social Justice” and “Samaja Samaya”, journals of the Movement for the Restoration of the Social Order, and was appointed Warden of Aquinas Hall, the University Catholic Hostel.
1940 - 8 December, he was appointed Fifth Rector of St. Joseph’s College, and in July 1944 a member of the Commission on Social Services.

1953 - February to August, visited the United States on a leadership grant.
1954 - He founded the Aquinas University  and became its first Rector. In June, he  founded the Society of St. Francis Xavier (The Xaverians).
1955 -1st December, he attended the Asian Congress in the Lay Apostolate, in Manila, Philippines as a delegate-expert.

1958 - October, he went to England for surgery and returned on 30th December.
1959 - 6 April, He was appointed Vicar-General for the Lay Apostolate in addition to his own duties.
1961 - August, he retired from St. Joseph’s College and took up residence at Aquinas.
1962 - He went to Europe and returned in August.
1964 - 6 March, he went to England for surgery. - 27th September, he died at Aquinas.

He was literate in physics and maths and knew in depth the true
elegance of both subjects, so much so, that a stellar mathematician
from the University of Madras, (from where Microsoft chairman
Bill Gates gets his mathematicians) whom I believe was Subramaniam
Chandrasekhar, called him a real genius. www.island lk/2001/03/20.
 

Sri Lanka 1985, Mi 701, Sc 754.

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