If one were to ask who the most outstanding graduates of Cambridge University are on Taiwan at present, Li Kwoh-ting would be named first by many.
Hailed as "a living witness to Taiwan's economic miracle" and "the godfather of science and technology on Taiwan" and currently serving as a senior advisor to the president, Li Kwoh-ting has been engaged for more than four decades in charting the course of the nation's scientific and economic development. And his three years at Cambridge were the fountainhead of his later achievements. During his interview, Mr. Li talked freely about his life as a student there.
Q: Why did you choose to study at Cambridge?
A: There were several reasons involved.
I graduated from National Southeast University (later renamed National Central University) in physics, but I was originally more interested in mathematics. In the second exam of 1934 to select students to study in Britain on a government scholarship which was founded with the indemnities for the Boxer Uprising, I got a perfect score in math, and the mathematician Chiang Li-fu came to see me specially and ask why I wanted to study physics instead of math.
But I had my reasons for choosing physics and Cambridge. I'd been fascinated as an undergraduate by a book I'd read on radiation and radioactive particles. Just think, a tiny little atom could split and transform, producing all sorts of particles and radiation: What an interesting world this is! It was that book that shifted my main interest from math to physics.
And the three authors of that book were all teaching at Cambridge. Lord Rutherford, a two-time winner of the Nobel Prize, was in charge of the renowned Cavendish physics lab, in which there was also J.J. Thomson, the discoverer of the electron; Sir James Chadwick, the discoverer of the neutron; and Sir John Cockcroft and E.T.S. Walton, who were the first physicists to successfully split the atom and create atomic fission. With world-class scientists like these working under one roof, it really was a golden age for physics at Cambridge. And since I had a chance to study in England,I naturally didn't want to miss that kind of an opportunity.
I started out studying nuclear physics in the Cavendish lab with Lord Rutherford, and two years later I switched to the research of low-temperature superconductors--come to think of it, I must be the first Chinese to have studied in that field. Unfortunately, the War of Resistance Against Japan broke out and I had to end my studies, pack up, and go home.
Q: Is the physics department at Cambridge still number one in the world?
A: It's different now of course. The more rapidly science advances, the more money and manpower it requires in investment.
Also, Cambridge was the main center for research on the atomic bomb in England, but after the Second World War the country concentrated its nuclear research at Harwell, near Oxford, under the direction of Professor Cockcroft. Now a nuclear reactor can't be built without the financial support of a country as a whole, so the position of Cambridge is not what it once was.
Q: What else do you remember about Cambridge besides its laboratories?
A: I was a student at Emmanuel College, the original meaning of which is "God is with us." Since I was a graduate student and busy all day with experiments I didn't run about much with the other students and I didn't engage in sports. But I had a friend in the undergraduates--I still remember his name was Jack Ambrose--who used to take me to a church in the countryside on Sundays. I wasn't a Christian then, not until I was baptized in Taiwan in 1966. But when I think back on it now, it seems as though the Lord has always been guiding me.
Q: You just said that you left Cambridge and returned to China only because of the outbreak of the war. Why exactly was that?
A: Lord Rutherford had helped me apply for a scholarship with the Royal Academy in London after my three-year government scholarship ended in 1937, but when the war broke out I felt it was a matter of national survival and I could never be at peace with myself if I stood aloof from it, so I decided to return home.
Q: You originally wanted to pursue academic research, but after returning to the country you became involved in practical affairs and government administration. Do you have any regrets about that?
A: I do at times, of course, but that's the way life is. A lot of people said it was stupid of me to give up my studies at Cambridge and come home. But I think the purpose in our going overseas was to come back and build up the country--to put Chinese science on the right track and enable future generations of young people to have a sound environment for study here without necessarily having to go overseas. Now we're turning out more and more people with master's and doctoral degrees at a quite high academic level. That's the result of academic research having put down roots here. (Laura Li/photos courtesy of Li Kwoh-ting/tr. by Peter Eberly)
[Picture Caption]
Li Kwoh-ting in a lab at Cambridge.
A souvenir picture in mortarboard and robes is a grand event in the life of an overseas student.
Cambridge has been called a city of bicycles. A high proportion are "borrowed away," but many are also returned.
Most of this crisscrossed jumble ot wires was designed and installed by the students themselves. Shown are Huang Kuo-hsiung and a friend.
