A graduate of Boston University, Mr Lee Wing Tat has enjoyed a successful career as a businessman despite serious and crippling illnesses, the increasing severity of which eventually forced his withdrawal from active participation in business management.
Mr Lee is a philanthropist who has encouraged and supported developments in education over a number of years. He has made numerous benefactions to medical research in universities and hospitals. He has financed scientific exchange programmes, scholarships, research funds, special facilities and equipment. Mr Lee's generosity has also been extended to charitable and other organisations, and, in the form of annual donations, to a number of secondary schools.
Projects that have benefited from Mr Lee's interest and concern include an exchange programme for medical students in their clinical years at the University of Hong Kong and their counterparts at Oxford University; an exchange programme for postgraduate students in medicine, surgery and orthopaedic surgery at the University of Hong Kong and students of Mr Lee's alma mater, Boston University; an exchange programme in business administration between students of Boston University and students in China. Research organisations concerned with a wide range of medical problems have also benefited from Mr Lee's donations which have supported research in cardiology, cardiothoracic surgery, neurosurgery, anaesthesiology, nephrology and orthopaedic surgery. A large number of scholarships have also been established.
Health problems of a serious and incapacitating nature have afflicted Mr Lee since he was a teenager. His courage and fortitude in the face of these severe handicaps is evidenced in many ways, not least in his abiding and continuing concern for the well-being and development of others.
In recognition of his contributions, the University has resolved to confer upon him the degree of Doctor of Social Sciences honoris causa.
