Bulletin Spring‧Summer 1999

Mr. Chancellor, Chairman of the Council, Vice-Chancellor, members of the faculty, ladies and gentlemen, graduates, I am honoured to speak on behalf of my fellow honorary degree graduates and say a few words on this auspicious occasion. When I was asked to speak, I believe the emphasis was on ‘few words'. I sympathize wit h this request. When I think back to my own graduation, I do not remember what the commencement speaker said. It is customary to give sage advice to the new graduates at commencements, but what advice can I give? Most of the people on this commencement platform, including myself, were born in the first half of this century, whereas you w i l l live most of your lives in a new century and a new millennium. What w i ll happen in the next century? There are many prognostications, but the only thing I am certain of is that it is impossible to predict what w i ll happen. We have the certainty o f an uncertain future. On a personal level, 1 have seen both my life and the lives of my friends and f ami ly take totally unforeseen twists and turns. On a politica l level, there have been many unforeseen events. How many people predicted 30 years ago that Germany would be reunified, that the Soviet Union would have fractured, and that China would be working towards a market economy? On an intellectual level, we can look back to the beginning of the twentieth century and consider the state of physics at that time. New t on i an Mechanics reigned. Some of the key predictions of the unification of electricity and magnetism had been recently verified, and several prominent physicists thought what remained in their field was a matter of tidying up loose ends. D u r i n g t h is c e n t u r y , we developed a des c r i p t i on o f the Chinese University Bulletin Spring ‧Summer 1999 54 by Prof. Steven Chu