Professor Kan Yuet Wai is currently the Louis K Diamond Professor of Haematology at the University of California, San Francisco, as well as Professor in the Departments of Medicine and of Biochemistry and Biophysics. He is also the Head of the Division of Genetics and Molecular Haematology at the University, and an investigator in, and the Director of, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Laboratories for the Study of Human Genetic Diseases, also in San Francisco.
Born in 1936 in Hong Kong, Professor Kan graduated from the University of Hong Kong in 1958 with a distinction in Social Medicine, Medicine, Surgery and Obstetrics and Gynaecology. In 1980, he was further awarded a Doctor of Science degree by the University.
Professor Kan is an internationally known geneticist and an expert on pre-natal diagnosis of blood diseases. He is recognised throughout the medical world for his contributions to the understanding of molecular defects which give rise to two common inherited genetic abnormalities, involving red blood cells: sickle cell anaemia and thalassaemia, and for the application of these findings to the detection of such inherited blood disorders by directly analysing DNA obtained from foetal cells in amniotic fluid. Professor Kan is now engaged in genetic studies of the mutations that cause thalassaemia, and is using his findings to develop gene probes to detect the many variants.
Amongst Professor Kan' s many distinguished awards was his election in 1981 to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of London. This is an honour rarely accorded to anyone outside Britain, and Professor Kan was both the first Chinese and the first graduate of the University of Hong Kong to receive this distinction.
In 1981, Professor Kan was further honoured by being awarded two doctorates, honoris causa; the first, awarded by the University of Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy, was the Doctor of Medicine degree, the other the Doctor of Science, awarded by the Chinese University of Hong Kong . Other distinctions have included awards for lectures delivered at a number of establishments, including amongst others the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, the Harvard Medical School, McGill University in Canada, Cornell University, the University of California, and the International and the American Societies of Haematology.
Professor Kan held a number of research, teaching and clinical positions in the United States and Canada between 1960 and 1970 before becoming an Assistant Professor of Paediatrics at the Harvard Medical School. Two years later, he became an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California and while in that post was also appointed Chief of the Haematology Service in San Francisco General Hospital.
Professor Kan is a member of the American Society of Haematology; the Western Society for Clinical Research; the American Federation for Clinical Research; the American Society for Clinical Investigation; the Western Association of Physicians; and was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1986, one of the highest honours that can be awarded to a scientist or engineer in America.
In recognition of his contributions, the University has resolved to confer upon him the degree of Doctor of Science honoris causa.
