Initiatives in Mainland China and Taiwan
Yau was born in China but grew up in Hong Kong. After the door of China was opened to the west in the late 1970s, Yau revisited China in 1979 on the invitation of Hua Luogeng.
To help develop Chinese mathematics, Yau started by educating students from China, then establishing mathematics research institutes and centers, organizing conferences at all levels, initiating out-reach programs, and raising private funds for these purposes. John Coates has commented on Yau's success as fundraiser. The first of Yau's initiatives is The Institute of Mathematical Sciences at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1993. The goal is to “organize activities related to a broad variety of fields including both pure and Applied mathematics, scientific computation, image processing, mathematical physics and statistics. The emphasis is on interaction and linkages with the physical sciences, engineering, industry and commerce.”
The second one is the Morningside Center of Mathematics in Beijing, established in 1996. Part of the money for the building and regular operations was raised by Yau from the Morningside Foundation in Hong Kong. Yau proposed organizing the International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians, now held every three years. The first congress was held at the Morningside Center from December 12 to 18, 1998. The third is the Center of Mathematical Sciences at Zhejiang University. It was established in 2002. Yau is the director of all these three math institutes and visits them on a regular basis.
Yau went to Taiwan to attend a conference in 1985. In 1990, he was invited by Dr. C.-S. Liu, then the President of National Tsinghua University, to visit the university for a year. A few years later, he convinced Liu, by then the chairman of National Science Council, to create the National Center of Theoretical Sciences (NCTS), which was established at Hsinchu in 1998. He was the chairman of the Advisory Board of the NCTS until 2005 and was followed by H. T. Yau of Harvard University.
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