The Friday Interview

From rebellious teenager to Nobel prize winner

If people are only preoccupied with competing and winning, who's worrying about the future of the world? Should countries follow the Western model of progress? Taiwanese Nobel laureate Lee Yuan Tseh talks to KAO CHEN about some of his key concerns.

WHAT do the six ethnic Chinese Nobel Prize winners have in common?

Ask Professor Lee Yuan Tseh, who in 1986 was a co-winner in chemistry, and his answer will be: "We were all quite rebellious in our younger days."

Recalling his school days in Hsinchu, Taiwan, he says he had a rebellious streak and often annoyed his teachers by asking lots of "unusual" questions.

He relates how he once nearly drove his geometry teacher to tears with an unorthodox answer. She wavered between giving him zero and 100, but finally gave him full marks.

He was certainly no bookworm, he confesses, and his fondest memories of his youth centres on playing baseball and ping-pong rather than on studying.

(For the record, the other five ethnic Chinese Nobel laureates -- all Chinese Americans and physics winners -- are Professors Yang Chen Ning and Lee Tsung Dao (1957), Samuel C.C. Ting (1976), Steven Chu (1997) and Daniel Tsui Chee (1998).

Prof Lee, 63, is now entrusted with the missions of building Academia Sinica, Taiwan's top research body, into a world-class institution; revamping the country's education system; nurturing creativity and raising environmental consciousness.

Meeting him during his visit here this week to deliver three lectures, you are struck immediately by the sincerity of his gaze and the intensity of his message.

He does not mince his words whether he is talking about the development of creative scientists in an Asian environment, competition in an information technology era, foreign talent or the future of mankind.

But it is on the podium that Lee Yuan Tseh's charisma becomes evident. Effortlessly, he keeps his audience enthralled in English and Mandarin, sometimes with humour, sometimes with the sheer power of his words.

He left Taiwan for the United States at 25 to pursue his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. His 32-year academic career in the US is studded with honours, culminating in the 1986 Nobel award which he shared with two others.

The prize was for inventing a technique called a "crossed molecular beam". This allows a person to observe in detail what occurs in a chemical reaction.

But in 1994, an invitation to be president of Academia Sinica beckoned. He left UC, Berkeley and his three grown children in the US and returned to Taiwan with his wife, Bernice.

"I was 57. I thought it was time to return to contribute what I could to the place I grew up in. And I wanted to do it before I became an old man," he says.

Because of his leadership and sense of purpose, he has been touted as a possible presidential candidate in the media, but he dismisses this as "just rumours".

He says: "My best role is in academia, education and scientific research, not politics."