Mr Daniel Yu Chung-Kwong is a celebrated industrialist in Hong Kong, and the Chairman and Director of Maxwell Electronics Limited.
Mr Yu realised from an early age that he had an innate talent for working with electronics, and founded Maxwell Electronics in 1966 after furthering his studies in the US, starting with manufacturing camera flash units for export. With his innovative designs and business sense, Mr Yu’s manufacturing business was propelled to unforeseen levels of success, contributing greatly to Hong Kong’s export sector, and later expanding into Mainland China. Although he is still involved with the stewardship of his company, he feels he is now in a position to devote more of his time to philanthropic work.
Over the past half-century, Mr Yu has witnessed both the ups and downs of the Hong Kong economy as well as the devastation of different pandemics ranging from the H5N1 virus to the SARS outbreak. As he admires the achievements of HKU and appreciates the devotion and hard work of its academics, Mr Yu established an Endowed Professorship in Virology in 2012, to support HKU researchers who work tirelessly in a never-ending race against emerging infectious diseases.
Mr Yu extended his support with another Endowed Professorship in Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology in 2013, believing that research and medical breakthroughs in the field will ultimately improve the lives of those who struggle with chronic rheumatoid and immunological disorders.
Mr Yu is an Honorary Patron of the HKU Foundation.
Citation written and delivered by Professor Gabriel LEUNG, Dean of Medicine
Standing before us is a man who has typified, in a remarkable way, the lived experience of Chinese intelligentsia of his generation. His story has been a microcosm of the history of modern China. Born into a merchant family, Daniel YU Chung Kwong (於崇光) read physics at the famed St John’s University in his native Shanghai before the Communists closed its doors. Like many of his ilk Hong Kong became home. But unlike many of the migrating diaspora, although his studies took him to America and later having lived in New York for an extended period, he returned and stayed. Decades before the portmanteau “Chimerica” was coined, our honorand was already personifying the neologism.
Yu directed his scientific curiosity and prowess to entrepreneurship. He founded and built an electronics empire that played no small part in earning Hong Kong the distinction as first amongst equals of the “four Asian dragons”. Ever the thoughtful type he christened his company after the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, who revolutionised colour photography by theorising about colour vision and presented the first durable colour photograph. The eponymous company founded by our honorand grew into an export pioneer in camera flash units.
Maxwell’s claim to fame actually rested on his equations in electromagnetism that fundamentally united the physical phenomena of light and sound. This key insight directly led to the prediction of radio waves thus the advent of broadcasting. Herein lies the dual link with our honorand. Light brought Maxwell Electronics commercial success whereas sound tugged at Yu’s heartstrings. Our honorand is an audiophile of the first order. His living room is an ultra high- fidelity sonic universe of state-of-the-art audio equipment recreating acoustic perfection.
A constant refrain throughout Yu’s life has been his adaptability to circumstances, however tumultuous and trying. He did not allow political struggle to end his quest for knowledge, or the Cultural Revolution to extinguish his fledgling flash photography business. He changed course to keep his goal, ultimately overcoming whatever the tides of history threw his way. History is made up of defining events. His story has been about making best of history.
As Yu always humbly reminds, in fact insists, he is but a “very ordinary” man, although one who by any measure has led an extraordinary life. On the 150th anniversary of Maxwell’s electromagnetism equations that inspired Maxwell Electronics, for his distinguished achievements, his “can-do” spirit, his grit and his civility, with admiration I commend to you, Mr President, Daniel YU Chung Kwong for the Honorary University Fellowship.
