At a time when the role of the laboratory in clinical medicine and in
medical research was evolving rapidly, a young Chinese graduate of the Hong
Kong College of Medicine and the University of Edinburgh undertook a period of
intensive training at the laboratory of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh
that was to play a pivotal role in determining his future career as the first
Professor of Pathology at the University of Hong Kong and its first professor of
Chinese descent. Chung Yik Wang’s subsequent achievements over a span of ten
years were a testament to the solid foundation that had been laid during that
early period, and was an excellent example of how the skills of medical science
could be transferred across continents to best effect. Tragically, Wang’s career was
cut short when he succumbed to tuberculosis, the disease he had spent many
years studying.
