Bulletin No. 1, 2024

“A lot of them were quite against that and refused to sell their land. But most of them had the same Cantonese surname as our family, so we had the same lineage, and shared Hakka ancestry. Ultimately my father won them over, and they agreed to sell—imagine if they hadn’t. We wouldn’t have CUHK here, on this spot.” Because of this special connection, young Yau chose to follow in his father’s footsteps after matriculating by setting his sights on CUHK. Even after so many years, Professor Yau has crystal clear memories of his teachers at Chung Chi, along with all they taught. The head of the College’s Mathematics Department, Tse Lan-on, taught linear algebra at the College and was a friend of his father. In addition to Dr Salaff, other members of staff who joined from overseas in Yau’s second year included Dr Ronald F Turner-Smith, whose main subject was algebra. Professor Yau also singles out Dr Elmer J Brody for mention. “Here was a very interesting teacher who’d graduated from Princeton and then visited Singapore before arriving at Hong Kong. He liked the Chinese language but didn’t consider Cantonese to be a proper language—only Putonghua would fly with him. So that language was required during Dr Brody’s lessons, and I learnt all my Putonghua from him.” Dr Brody would bring out Chinese mathematician Li Wenqing’s Functional Analysis during lessons From a few simple axioms, you can prove so many other theories, which in turn lead to the most beautiful diagrams. That’s what kickstarted my passion for maths. and ask his students to look for errors, starting with the first chapter. “That was our entire semester: reading the book, pointing out mistakes and how one might correct them. It was very interesting as it trained our critical thinking: you needed to know what was wrong, and how to make it right again.” CUHK was Yau’s first step towards an academic life of great distinction, during which he has been showered with many international honours. On top of teaching at Tsinghua University in Beijing, since 1993 he has spent three months each year in Hong Kong, teaching and supervising research students at CUHK and leading academic work at the University’s Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He declares, “Six decades on, I still think that the Department of Mathematics in CUHK is the best you can find in Hong Kong!” 3 When genius means more than a piece of paper   33