Prof Yau Shing-tung.
Lingnan University will confer honorary doctoral degrees on two leading professors in recognition of their outstanding achievements and valuable contributions to humanity. They are renowned mathematician Prof Yau Shing-tung and distinguished structural biologist ProfNieng Yan.
Biographies of the Honorary Doctorate recipients:
Prof Yau Shing-tung
Prof Yau Shing-tung has dedicated his life to unravelling the mysteries of mathematics and physics, making pioneering contributions in the fields of differential geometry and physics. He has won numerous awards including the Fields Medal, the United States National Medal of Science, the Wolf Prize in Mathematics, and the Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences, and is a member of many prestigious scientific academies, including the Accademia dei Lincei of Italy, the US National Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Indian Academy of Sciences, and the Russian Academy of Sciences. Prof Yau was Chairman of the Mathematics Department and a professor in the Physics Department of Harvard University, and he is currently the Director of the Yau Mathematical Sciences Center, Tsinghua University.
Born in Shantou in southern China in 1949, Prof Yau moved to Hong Kong with his family to escape the civil war, and grew up in a farming village in the New Territories. After graduating from Pui Ching Middle School and Chung Chi College at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, he was admitted to the Graduate School at UC Berkeley in 1969, and then started his career at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. In 1982, Prof Yau was awarded the Fields Medal, the highest honour in mathematics, which can only be given to mathematicians under the age of 40. Inspired by his father’s words about contributing to one’s own people, Prof Yau has devoted himself to the mathematics community in China, founding research institutes in Hong Kong, Hangzhou, Beijing, Taipei, Nanjing, and Shanghai that have produced several famous mathematicians.
Prof Yau's academic career has been illustrious, and he has received accolades and honours in recognition of his groundbreaking scientific research. He has honorary doctorates from Columbia University, the University of Waterloo, the University of Alberta, the National Taiwan University, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and many others.
He will be awarded Doctor of Science, honoris causa.
Prof Nieng Yan
Prof Nieng Yan is a well-known structural biologist whose seminal research has revolutionised our understanding of membrane protein structures and mechanisms. Born in Shandong Province in 1977, she completed her undergraduate studies at Tsinghua University in 2000, then pursued a doctoral degree at Princeton University.
Rising rapidly in academia Prof Yan became the youngest doctoral supervisor at Tsinghua University at the age of 30, and her appointment as the Shirley M. Tilghman Professor at Princeton University in 2017 marked a significant milestone as she is the first scientist to hold this august position. In 2019, she was elected a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, and, in 2023, to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Prof Yan's scientific contributions are both important and invaluable. Her laboratory was the first to elucidate the atomic structures of several critical membrane proteins, and these discoveries have advanced our fundamental understanding of cellular processes and provided crucial insights for drug development. Prof Yan’s work has twice been selected as one of the top ten scientific breakthroughs by Science magazine, and published in authoritative journals including Nature, Science, and Cell. The impact of her research extends to practical applications in medicine, and particularly in understanding disease mechanisms and developing new therapeutic approaches.
Prof Yan's recent return to China to set up and lead the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation demonstrates her commitment to advancing life sciences research and education in her homeland. Her philosophy that "being a female scientist can be challenging, but not to the extent that anyone should be stopped. So, be brave, be yourself" has inspired countless young scientific researchers, particularly women. Receiving the 2024 L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science International Award further underscores her position as a global leader in scientific research.
She will be awarded Doctor of Science, honoris causa.
