CUHK Research

5 CUHK RESEARCH The German-born American rocket engineer Werner von Braun (1912–77) once said: “Basic research is what I am doing when I don’t know what I am doing.” Basic research can sometimes obfuscate not only laymen but also the scientists themselves, probably because it often seeks to answer basic questions like how life begins, the origin of the universe or why, in the words of Bertrand Russell, “numbers hold sway above the flux”. In 1990, the first twins in Hong Kong produced from frozen-thawed embryos in test-tubes were born, a result of the efforts in embryo preservation and implantation by CUHK medical researchers. CUHK researchers continue to take on life’s mysteries, as can be seen in the work of Prof. Chan Hsiao-chang on epithelial ion channels and their roles in human infertility. Plant life has also been the subject of CUHK’s research focus from the early days. Decades ago, Prof. Chang Shu-ting’s pioneering work in fungal genetics had inaugurated the “Mushroom Science”. Today, exciting new grounds are being opened up, for example, by Prof. Jiang Liwen’s discovery of a new organelle in plants. CUHK has developed strong disciplines in the physical sciences, credit to a long line of outstanding chemists and physicists but not least to supportive friends like Prof. C.N. Yang, Nobel laureate in physics. The quest to get to the basic answers is exemplified in Prof. Xie Zuowei’s building a large carborane hardly imaginable at the time, and Prof. Chu Ming-chung’s courting of the elusive neutrinos. Prof. Yau Shing﹣tung, CUHK alumnus, Fields Medalist and Wolf Prize laureate in mathematics, has made many seminal discoveries in his career. His fellow mathematicians at CUHK are busy with tilling the many parcels in the field, including Prof. Wei Juncheng in non-linear patterns in spatial dimensions. The history of science is full of conjugated terms–e.g., the Yang–Mills Theory, the Calabi–Yau manifolds–denoting collaboration and emulation. CUHK has no lack of team work in research, whether it be among colleagues or involving students or peers from other institutions. Some teams and their work are presented in this volume. But such a glimpse can in no way do justice to how vibrantly research, basic or applied, is being carried out by the community of scholars on campus.