HKU Bulletin June 2013 (Vol. 14 No. 3)

Saluting Pioneers At the 188 th Congregation, six honorary degrees were conferred on individuals who have made groundbreaking contributions to their fields. The recipients included Mr Patrick Yu Shuk- siu, Professor Sir Alec John Jeffreys, who also gave an acceptance speech on behalf of all recipients, Professor Mai Yiuwing, Professor Fan Jinshi, Professor Wang Shenghong and Mr Rocco Yim Sen-kee. They received their awards at a ceremony in March, presided over by HKU’s Pro-Chancellor Dr the Honourable David Li Kwok-po. Honours ê ë ì í î ë ï ð ñ ò ó ô õ ó ñ ö ÷ ï ó ø í ÷ ù ú ë û í ü ü ý þ ë ÿ ÷ ÿ î ÿ ø ï î õ õ ï ÷ õ ú ú ë í ë ý ÿ ë ÿ ÿ ý î õ ÿ ì ë ú ö õ í ð ÿ ü ü ú ë ë î õ ÿ ú ú ó ë í ü ÿ í ï ï ø ú ñ ö þ ú í ï ð ÿ ö õ í ð ÿ ü ü ú ë ì ë ú ù ÿ ÷ ÷ ú ë í þ ö õ ÿ ÿ ÷ ó ï ï í ð ÿ ë ÿ û ú ý õ ÿ ü í î õ ï ÷ õ ú û ÿ Mr Patrick Yu Shuk-siu Patrick Yu has been a role model of integrity, moral courage and dignity. He was the first Chinese Crown Counsel in Hong Kong, the foremost criminal lawyer in Hong Kong and one of the Founders of HKU’s Faculty of Law. He was also a steadfast critic of the discriminatory employment terms that were common under the colonial administration. Mr Yu was born in 1922 and attended HKU for three years before his studies were interrupted by the WWII. He escaped to China and served with the British and Republic of China intelligence corps, but his education was not forgotten. He was awarded a wartime degree and in 1945 received a Hong Kong government scholarship to study at Oxford University. Mr Yu returned to Hong Kong in 1951 to take up the Crown Counsel appointment. Expatriates enjoyed more generous terms than locals and he found the discrimination intolerable, so he decided to enter private practice after one year. By the mid-1960s he was Hong Kong’s top criminal lawyer. It was during this time that he also played a leading role in the establishment of the Law School (later the Faculty of Law) at HKU. In the 1970s Mr Yu was offered a Supreme Court judgeship three times, but he turned down each offer due to the continued unequal employment terms. He remained a private practitioner until his retirement in 1983. He has since written two autobiographies and remains a Life Member of the Hong Kong Bar Association. Professor Sir Alec John Jeffreys Television crime shows, let alone medical science and law enforcement agencies, owe a great debt to Sir Alec Jeffreys, who pioneered DNA fingerprinting. The renowned geneticist was looking at an X-ray image of DNA from various individuals on September 10, 1984 when it suddenly struck him that people could be identified by the variations in their individual genetic code. “Most scientific research is a slow, painful slog, a sort of three steps forward, two steps back,” he said afterwards. “What we had was a rare thing in science and that was my eureka moment when we first stumbled upon the whole idea of DNA fingerprinting.” The discovery revolutionised legal and forensic science. It is used globally to identify perpetrators of crime, settle paternity and immigration disputes, and carry out work on non-human species such as wildlife populations. Sir Alec has also made great strides in the study of copy genes, split genes and pseudogenes and currently is developing techniques to detect spontaneous changes in DNA when it is transmitted from parent to child. He has been widely honoured for his work, receiving a Knighthood in 1994, the Louis-Jeantet Prize of Medicine in 2004, the Lasker Prize in 2005 and the Heineken Prize in 2006. Sir Alec spoke at HKU in 2008 and gave this advice to science students and budding CSI investigators: “Go for it. Science is terrific fun. The fact that you can go out with your bare hands and find out interesting things about the world through experimentation never ceases to amaze me.” 25 June 2013 The University of Hong Kong Bulletin