Sept 2013
Dr Doris Chen (2nd row, 3rd left) with the then Head of Department, Professor A J Ellis (back row, 2nd left), former Heads Dr K Y Chan (back row, 5th right) and Professor Y C Wong (back row, 3rd right) at the annual departmental outing in winter 1982.
A memorial fund has been established at the Department of Mathematics by Professor William Chen and Dr John Chen, sons of the late Dr Doris Chen Lai-chue 陳郭麗珠 (1929 – 2012), a mathematician who was the first female teacher at the Department and who earned the respect and affection of generations of HKU undergraduates in mathematics from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s.
The Fund will be used to support scholarships for research postgraduate students and scholarly activities at the Department of Mathematics.
Dr Doris Chen graduated in 1949 with a degree in mathematics from Sun Yat Sen University in Canton. She went to King’s College of the University of London in 1949, and obtained a PhD in mathematics in 1955. From 1953 until her retirement in 1985, she was a lecturer in mathematics at HKU.
For many generations of undergraduates in mathematics, Dr Doris Chen was a symbol of elegance and culture, and a person full of warmth and kindness. For many female students, Dr Chen was their role model, being one of the few female faculty academic at the Faculty of Science at the time.
Dr Doris Chen
September 2013
