Tributes paid to Professor Rayson Huang Li-sung who made contribution to HK's education & politiics

Professor Rayson Huang Li-sung
1920-2015

Professor Rayson Huang Li-sung, a prominent chemist and the first Chinese vice chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, died peacefully in Britain on Wednesday. He was 94.

The only alumnus turned vice chancellor to date for the 104-year-old HKU, Huang led the institution as its 10th chief from 1972 to 1986, through the economic downturn and political uncertainty that were plaguing the then British colony.

"Dr Huang made great contributions to Hong Kong, in academic, social and political arenas alike," incumbent vice chancellor Professor Peter Mathieson told students, alumni and staff in an email on Sunday.

Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying expressed profound sadness. "He was actively involved in the work for Hong Kong's return to the motherland."

Born on September 1, 1920, in Shantou , Guangdong, Huang was educated at Munsang College, where his father Rufus Huang was the founding principal. He studied at HKU from 1938 to 1942 with the help of a government scholarship, majoring in chemistry.

In 1944, he went to Oxford University on a Rhodes Trust Scholarship, attaining a doctorate before starting postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago, where he met and married his wife Grace. She died in 1999.

Violin making was among his many hobbies.

From 1951, Huang began two decades of teaching in the Malay peninsula, at the University of Malaya - now the National University of Singapore - in Singapore followed by Kuala Lumpur.
He became vice chancellor of Nanyang University in Singapore in 1969, but returned to Hong Kong in 1972 to serve as vice chancellor of his alma mater.

In his autobiography, A Lifetime in Academia, Huang recalled having to "resort to putting pressure on the [students'] union to bring them to order". Undergrad, the union's newspaper, had published a report accusing an officer of taking bribes, without substantial evidence. Huang decided HKU would stop collecting annual fees for the union until it retracted the article.

"He wasn't the kind of vice chancellor who maintained a close relationship with students," former HKU pro-vice-chancellor Rosie Young said.

Bank of East Asia chairman David Li Kwok-po remembered his close friend of many years with fondness. "He was a very smart and sharp person, while at the same time a very good leader," Li, whom Huang had appointed as HKU treasurer, said .

Politically, Huang served on the Legislative Council and the Basic Law drafting committee.
Fellow committee member Martin Lee Chu-ming hailed him for facilitating a Basic Law provision on allowing universal suffrage in 2007 at the soonest, five years earlier than suggested by other proposals.

To Lee, Huang was unflappable even amid national crises. "Huang telephoned me on June 4, 1989. He asked me whether he should resign from the drafting committee. He was too saddened," Lee said, referring to the Tiananmen Square bloodshed.

Huang stayed on upon Lee's advice. He left in 1994 for Britain, where his sons, Christopher and Freddie, were university scholars.

"It was the second time, in half a century, I took leave of Hong Kong - this place on earth with so many dear friends which I hold in lasting affection."

Reporting by Jeffie Lam, Stuart Lau and Enoch Yiu, SCMP