香港中文大学（深圳）研究生院院长唐叔贤院士在2021年度入学典礼上的致辞

香港中文大学（深圳）研究生院院长

中国科学院院士唐叔贤教授

在2021年度入学典礼上的致辞

点击视频观看唐叔贤教授致辞

Click the video to watch Prof. David Tong's Speech

亲爱的校长，各位同事，各位同学、家长和朋友们，早上好！

这确实是一个非常特别的典礼。虽然我不能亲眼看到新生的脸庞，但我能感受到你们的活力、希望与期待。

这个场合让我想起了我也曾是香港大学某届开学典礼上的67名理科新生之一。是的，你没听错。我那一届只有67名理科生。毕业之后，我在美国生活了25年，在香港生活了22年，在深圳生活了10年。而我今天要和大家分享的三个故事，分别发生在这三个地方。

第一个故事发生在我27岁的时候，当时我刚刚从加州大学欧文分校博士毕业，拿着美国国家科学基金会的拨款去到了康奈尔大学。在那里，我遇到了一个改变我一生的人——美国物理学家Lester Germer。Germer曾在哥伦比亚大学学习物理，师从Sydney Davisson。二人曾在贝尔实验室工作在那里，他们进行了Davisson-Germer实验，展示了电子的波动性质。这是量子力学的基础。后来，因为这项重大贡献，Davisson荣获了诺贝尔物理学奖。在他们的论文中，Germer写道：“低能电子衍射（LEED）将成为用以测定单晶表面结构的有效手段，正如用以分析晶体内部结构的X射线衍射一样强大。然而，由于需要非常详细的数值模拟，把测得的低能电子衍射数据转化为表面间距并非易事。因此，四十多年来，这个问题一直悬而未决。”

刚到康奈尔大学时，我正在四处寻找可行的研究课题。Germer当时已经七十出头了，刚刚从贝尔实验室搬到了康奈尔大学，也正好需要找个人共同解决上述的难题。我们俩在康奈尔大学的一次研讨会上偶然相遇，Germer对我产生了兴趣。接下来的三个月里，我们每逢周六下午便会在我位于康奈尔大学克拉克大楼的小办公室里碰头。不知怎的，一切似乎是那么的顺理成章。很快，我发现自己有能力解决这个长期未得破解的难题。于是，我花了13个月时间集中研究，并终于在1970年的圣诞节期间完成了论文，提交给了《物理评论快报》（Physical Review Letters）。不到6周时间，论文正式发表了。在接下来的几年里，我被邀请在三大洲的众多知名物理、化学和材料科学会议中就这个课题发表演讲。也正因如此，30岁不到的我得以全球旅行见识世界。直到现在，研究人员仍在使用我研发的方法和我写的书，来确定精确度为百分之一纳米的表面间距。我对Germer的恩情没齿难忘，因为正是他带领我进入了“低能电子衍射”的殿堂。不幸的是，论文发表7个月后，Germer在攀岩时意外去世了。

让我们快进到23年后，我放弃了冠名讲座教授职位，离开美国，回到了我的母校香港大学担任物理系主任。就职期间，我聘请了一位年轻的教员。他研究的课题是使用分子束外延（MBE）来培育一种新型的晶体。这种晶体极不稳定，无法单独生长，只能在合适的基底上形成一层薄膜。但是这种晶体能够发出非常明亮的蓝光，其亮度是前所未见的。我们二人合力确定了这种新晶体的表面结构。后来，我受邀前往北京大学就新晶体发表演讲。演讲结束后，一位老教授把我拉到一旁，说只要有人能让这种晶体发出不同颜色的光，它就会成为风靡全球的照明材料。我并没有采纳老教授的建议。因为根据我的详细调查，这种晶体的缺陷比硅晶体多100万倍。

好吧，这种新型的晶体便是氮化镓。15年后的今天，由氮化镓和荧光粉制成的LED已经被广泛应用于照明和装饰行业。每每入夜，你便能看到它们为深圳的许多高楼大厦带来色彩和生命。我在很早的时候就参与了氮化镓的研究，但我错过了它在照明方面的巨大潜力，因为我知道的有点多。有时候，知道的太多并不是一件好事。

让我们再快进一下，看看现在的光景。中国已经签署了一项公告，承诺在9年后实现二氧化碳排放峰值。换句话说，未来每个工厂想要多生产一吨二氧化碳，就必须从大气中减少相同数值的二氧化碳。目前，中国的二氧化碳排放量占全世界的27%，是世界上最大的二氧化碳排放国。为了达到目标，国内约50%的燃煤电厂将被取代。然而在我看来，二氧化碳减排目标对中国而言既是一个挑战，也是一个巨大的机遇。

道理很简单。在当代，如果你像沙特阿拉伯或科威特那样幸运，坐拥大量的石油储备，你可以通过钻探石油并将石油卖到全球各地，轻松发家致富。但在9年后，你再也无法随意燃烧石油了。因此，哪个国家能够掌握太阳能储能技术，便能成为世界上新的能源供应商。太阳新能源也被称为绿色石油，但它是无法被挖掘出来的，只能通过高科技生产出来。我斗胆设想，中国将成为这种“绿色石油”能源的全球主要提供者，而我也愿意亲身参与到这一宏伟探索之中。

我亲爱的2021级新生们。我们这一代人，曾目睹中国被列强入侵蹂躏，受极端贫困折磨，却百炼成钢重回世界强国之列。而对你们这一代人而言，我预见诸位将成为中国在国内生产总值、科学追求和文化发展方面引领世界的重要推力。在这个新的世界秩序下，有你们的参与，世界将变得更加包容，而不是分裂。我们要追求的是和平共赢的命运共同体，而不是“你输我赢”的零和博弈。

我之所以和大家分享这些故事，不是想要大家聚焦于我本人，我的故事无足轻重。真正重要的，是希望能够提醒各位为未来做好准备。命运总会眷顾那些保持开放心态且做好准备迎接挑战的人。机会，也是留给他们的。当一扇门关闭的时候，另一扇门自然会打开。

我妈妈过去常同我说，你吃点亏是没有问题的。当一个人不介意吃亏的话，如果有什么大事情发生，自然有人会伸手帮你的。吃亏的人吃不了大亏，假如大家都不介意吃亏的话，这个世界將会变成太美好了，大家不必去你争我夺。这也是我们中国文化同西方文化不一样的地方，中国儒家最高境界是“仁”，所谓仁者，可以理解成一个不怕吃亏的人。

最后，我想与各位分享探讨关于成功的定义。什么样的人才是成功的人？我们应该如何衡量成功？请诸位仔细思考一下，希望各位会得出和我一样的结论。在我看来，衡量成功的最好方法是看你帮助了别人多少，而绝不是“从别人那里拿走多少”。愿诸位能够积极向上，和善友爱，乐于助人，虚怀若谷。若诸位能做到这几点，你人生中的多扇大门定将为你开启。

感谢各位！

Prof. David Tong's Speech

at Inauguration Ceremony 2021

Slide up to read more

Dear President, Colleagues, Dear Students, Parents and Friends,Good morning!

This is indeed, a very special commencement. Although I cannot see the faces of the students in person, however, I can feel your energy, your hope, and your anticipation.

This occasion reminds me of when I was one of 67 science students at the commencement of the University of Hong Kong. Yes, there were only 67 science students in my class when I entered HKU. From that day to the present time, I spent 25 years in the United States, 22 years in Hong Kong and 10 years in Shenzhen. Today, I’m going to tell you 3 stories, each happened at one of the 3 places.

The first story was when I was 27 years old, a fresh PhD from the University of California, Irvine. I went to Cornell University on a National Science Foundation Fellowship. There, I met a person who would forever change my life. The person was Lester Germer. Germer himself studied Physics at Columbia University under Sydney Davisson. He then worked with Davidson at Bell Labs. There, they performed the Davisson-Germer experiment that showed the wave nature of electrons. This is a foundation of Quantum Mechanics. The Davisson-Germer experiment won Davisson the Nobel prize in Physics. In their paper, Germer wrote that low energy electron diffraction (LEED) would be a very useful tool to determine surface structure, much like x-ray diffraction was a powerful tool to determine the interior structure of crystals. But it was not that easy to turn the measured LEED data into surface spacings, because it required detailed numerical simulations. So, for over forty years, the problem remained unsolved.

When I arrived at Cornell University, I was looking for a problem to do. Germer, at that time was in his early seventies and he has moved from Bell labs to Cornell University and he has this problem that required someone to work on. We had a chance meeting at one of the Cornell seminars and Germer took an interest in me. So, for three months, we spent every Saturday afternoon in my tiny office at Clark Hall of Cornell. For some unknown reason, everything seemed to come together. I soon found that I had what was needed to solve this long-standing problem. I worked exclusively on this problem for 13 months, and during the X’mas holidays of 1970, I wrote the paper, submitted it to Physical Review Letters and the paper was published in less than 6 weeks. In the following years, I was invited to speak on this work at every major conference in Physics, Chemistry and Materials science, on 3 continents. So, I got to see the world by invitation and I was not yet 30 years old. The method that I developed and the book I wrote on it are still being used by researchers to determine surface spacings to an accuracy of one-hundredth of a nanometer. I am eternally beholden to Lester Germer, the man who introduced me to the LEED problem. Unfortunately, Germer died while he was rock climbing 7 months after my work was published.

Let me fast forward 23 years to the time when I left the United States, giving up a named chair professorship, to take up the Chair of Physics at the University of Hong Kong, my Alma Mater. At HKU, I hired a young faculty member and he used Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) to grow a strange crystal. This crystal cannot exist by itself because it is unstable. It can only be formed as a thin film on a suitable substrate. But the crystal gives out a very bright blue light, at a brightness not seen before. The faculty member and myself determined the surface structure of this new crystal. One of the places that I gave a talk on this new crystal was Peking University. There, an old professor pulled me aside after my talk and said if only someone can make different colored light to come out of this crystal, it will be used everywhere as a lighting material. I did not pursue his suggestion because I have studied in detail this crystal and found out that it contained 1 million times more defects than a silicon crystal.

Well, this strange crystal is, of course, GaN and now 15 years later, LEDs made from GaN with phosphor are used everywhere for lighting and decoration. You see them at night bringing color and life to many, many tall buildings here in Shenzhen. I was on GaN research very early in the game, but I missed its huge potential in lighting because I knew a bit too much. Sometimes, knowing too much is not a good thing.

Let me fast forward again, to the present time. China has signed a proclamation that in 9 years’ time, it will reach maximum CO2 emission. In other words, every factory that produces one extra ton of CO2 will need to reduce the same amount from the atmosphere. At present, China produces 27% of the world’s CO2 emission. It is the world’s largest contributor of CO2 emission. To reach its goal, approximately 50% of China’s coal burning power plants will need to be replaced. However, I believe that reaching China’s CO2 reduction goal offers both a challenge and a tremendous opportunity for China.

This is because up to now, if you are lucky like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, that sits on a pile of oil reserves, you can drill for oil and sell the oil all over the globe and become extremely rich. But in 9 years’ time, you can no longer burn oil at will. Therefore, whichever country that can harness the sun’s energy and store it as a green liquid will become the new energy provider of the world. The new energy from the sun, or green oil, cannot be dug up. It needs to be produced through high technology. I envision a future that China will become the world’s main provider of this green liquid energy. And I plan to be part of this quest.

My dear cohort of 2021. In my generation, I have witnessed a China ravished by foreign invasion, endured extreme poverty but it bounced back to become a world power. In your generation, I foresee that you will be part of a China that leads the world in gross domestic product, in scientific pursuits and in cultural development. Under this new world order, the world, with your participation, will be more inclusive, rather than divisive. A world that seeks winning solutions for humankind, rather than someone must lose because I want to win.

I tell you these stories not to bring attention to myself. What happened to me is not important. I tell you these stories to show that you should always be well prepared and that fate will grant many opportunities to those who are open and ready to accept challenges. As one door closes, another door will open.

My mum used to tell me that it's okay get the short end of the stick. When you doesn't mind taking a loss, someone will naturally reach out to help you when you are in need. If everyone doesn't mind taking a loss, the world would be a much better place and we wouldn't have to fight for each other. This is where our Chinese culture differs from that of the West. The highest level of Chinese Confucianism is "benevolence", which can be understood as a person who is not afraid to get the short end of the stick.

Finally, I wish to leave you with this thought. What is a successful person? How do we or should we measure success. If you think through this, I hope you’ll come to the same conclusion as I did, that the best way to measure success is by how much you have helped others. We do not measure success by how much you take from others. So please, be positive, be friendly, be helpful, be humble and I can assure you, many good doors will open for you in your lifetime.

Thank you very much for listening!

-End-

传讯及公共关系处出品

香港中文大学（深圳）

CUHK-Shenzhen

结合传统与现代

融会中国与西方