In Memory

It is indeed a privilege for me to be able to speak a few words on this occasion in honor of the 90th birthday of Professor Y. C. Wong. Professor Wong has been my teacher, my boss, and my mentor. I was asked by Professor M. K. Siu to tell some stories about my early years in the Department relating to Professor Wong. What I am going to say will be very fragmentary, in fact more like snapshots of the past.

Scene 1: My first encounter with Professor Wong

I entered the University of Hong Kong in 1956. In those days, there was no official student orientation familiarizing the freshmen with the university environment. On the first day at the start of Term, students were expected to go direct to their lecture rooms. I could not find my lecture room and, somehow, ended up in the Department of Mathematics. There I bumped into a gentleman who kindly asked someone in the department to show me the way. If I was not mistaken, that very gentleman was no other than Professor Wong himself. Thus began my long association with the Department.

Scene 2: As a student of Professor Wong

While Professor Wong was well known among the mathematics undergraduates, not many of them actually had the good fortune of being taught by him. I attended his class for the first time in my B.Sc. (Special) year, taking the course Differential Geometry. I might have forgotten much of the lecture materials, but I can still vividly remember the lecturing style of Professor Wong. Our class had only 7 students. Students in Professor Wong's class had to be very alert. At the start of a lecture, Professor Wong often asked one of us to say something about a topic taught in the previous lecture. On one occasion, I was asked to talk about orthogonal matrices. I forgot the details now. But I still remember that I tried to relate the fact that a 3 x 3 proper orthogonal matrix with real elements always has an eigenvalue of unity, with the theorem in Mechanics that a general displacement of a rigid body with a fixed point is equivalent to a rotation about same suitable axis. I got some good remarks from Professor Wong for the presentation. He always tried to encourage his students.

Scene 3: As a demonstrator in the Department

After graduation, I joined the Department as a demonstrator in 1960. It was then a much smaller department, yet cosy and intimate. The department headed by Professor Wong was then responsible also for the teaching of Statistics as well as Mathematics for engineering students. The other teachers were, if I remember correctly: Dr. K.T. Leung, Dr. S.T. Tsou, Dr. D. Chen, Dr. Y.M. Chen, Dr. K.V. Leung, Dr. H.M. Chan, Dr. Maunder and Mr. C.S. Hui. There were 4 demonstrators: Samuel Young, C.S. Hsu, P.C. Yuen and myself. K.Y Lam joined us the next year. The Department had the very English practice of having tea breaks each day. At about 10 o'clock in the morning and 3:30 in the afternoon, Ah Hin would go around the department, knocking at the office doors of the teaching staff telling them that tea was ready. Professor Wong usually had his tea in his own office, but the rest of the teaching staff would all go to the tea room. There we sat around a table and chatted freely. The Mathematics Department has been known for its unity and strong sense of belonging. In this, the tea breaks probably had an important role to play! A weekly seminar used to be held in Professor Wong's office. It was there that I first learned about Professor Wong's work on isoclinic planes.

Scene 4: As a teacher in the Department

I rejoined the Department as a lecturer in 1967. The Department had grown much bigger then, occupying both wings at the back on the top floor of the Main Building. In 1973, Professor Wong, at the age of 60, decided that he would like to be relieved from the Headship while continuing his appointment as the Professor of Mathematics for a further three years. He recommended me to the Vice-Chancellor to take up the Headship. That was really an overwhelming responsibility. I would not have been able to do the job if I had not the unfailing support and constant advice of Professor Wong, and of course, the support of my colleagues. Indeed, throughout this period, Professor Wong continued to provide the much needed academic leadership. In this connection, I may tell one story related to the birth of the Hong Kong Mathematical Society. After the establishment of the Southeast Asian Mathematical Society, Professor Wong was eager to encourage the setting up of national mathematical societies in the Southeast Asian countries. The grand idea was to have a network of national societies with the Southeast Asian Mathematical Society as the hub. In 1976, on his initiative, a letter was sent out jointly in the name of the Professor of Mathematics and of the Head of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Hong Kong inviting Professor Wu of the Chinese University and Dr. I. Tang of Hong Kong Polytechnic to a meeting at the University to discuss the formation of a mathematical society in Hong Kong. I still remember that the four of us sat around a small coffee table in the Head's Office in Knowles Building. The decision was readily made. Dr. Tang was asked to chair a preparatory committee to form the Hong Kong Mathematical Society. The Committee set out to work at once and Professor Wong attended all its meetings. An interim Council was formed in 1978 and the Hong Kong Mathematical Society officially came into being in November 1979. For his contributions, Professor Wong was most deservingly elected Honorary Life President of the Hong Kong Mathematical Society.

I could go on much longer, but time is running out and I stop here.