Alexander Todd - A Time to Remember

In the spring of 1970 my younger daughter, Hilary, who had set out to travel overland to the Far East with a view to taking a stage management job in connection with Expo 70 in Tokyo, ended up in Hong Kong where she took a job with a television company and remained there for about three years. Prior to this my wife and I had visited Hong Kong on several occasions, and we had good friends there in Sir Lindsay and Lady Ride. Sir Lindsay, a well-known figure in the Colony, had been Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong until his retirement in 1965. We also knew among others the professor of chemistry, Douglas Payne, who had worked in my department in Cambridge and who, with his wife Grace, was extremely kind and helpful to my daughter when she arrived in Hong Kong. Naturally, having a daughter there caused us to increase the number of our visits to Hong Kong, and we became frequent visitors from 1970 onwards, and continued to be such even after Hilary left and returned to England. Our growing association with Hong Kong depended not only on the Rides and numerous other friends we acquired there, but also, and perhaps more importantly, on my involvement with the recently created Chinese University of Hong Kong located near Shatin in the New Territories. This university, which occupies a magnificent site overlooking the sea, was formed as a bilingual university by an amalgamation of three colleges -Chung Chi College, United College and New Asia College -under the dynamic leadership of its first Vice-Chancellor (and effective creator) Dr C. M. Li, whom I came to know well. When I first saw the campus, the only college actually on it was Chung Chi, but now the whole university is located there and it is still growing. The Chinese University interested me greatly; as a bilingual institution which, unlike the older University of Hong Kong, could take entrants from the Chinese middle schools in Hong Kong, and operating four-year courses on a pattern closer to that used in the People's Republic of China, it appeared to have great potential for the future. With the passage of time the Republic and Hong Kong were bound to get closer and it seemed to me that the Chinese University could have a major role to play as a kind of bridge between the Chinese universities and those of the western world. Because of my belief in its potential, my contacts with it increased, and in 1978 I accepted an invitation to become a member of the University Council, a position which I still hold. In that capacity I have come to know and to enjoy the friendship of Dr Ma Lin who succeeded Dr Li as Vice-Chancellor, and who shares my view of the university's potential.

In 1978 I had a letter from Lady Ride (now, alas, widowed) telling me that she had an old friend, Mr Noel Croucher, who was in a very worried state and wanted my help. Noel Croucher had lived in Hong Kong since he arrived there as a very young man in 1910. A stockbroker, he amassed over the years a very large fortune; separated from his family, he lived alone in a large house part way up the Peak and, at the time of which I write, he had become something of a recluse. His fame in financial circles was legendary (I remember reading an article in The Financial Times in which he was described as the eminence grise of Hong Kong finance). Noel loathed publicity of any sort, and, although he had from time to time made substantial donations to schools and hospitals in Hong Kong, he took great pains to conceal as far as humanly possible the fact that he had done so. At the time Lady Ride wrote to me, he had been wondering how best to use for charitable purposes a substantial sum of money which he had, and did not wish to see unused. He had discussed the matter with some of his financial associates who had made various suggestions about setting up trusts, but he didn't really like any of the schemes proposed. Moreover, he got an idea (probably quite erroneous) into his head that those to whom he had talked were really out to get hold of his money. When an old gentleman of eighty-eight gets ideas like that into his head they are very hard to remove; so it was that he talked about his troubles to Lady Ride, and decided he wished to discuss everything with me as someone he could trust. Within a very short time from my receipt of Lady Ride's original letter I had a long screed from Noel about his problems, and asking me to come and see him about them. Now, it is true that I had met Noel Croucher once or twice fleetingly at functions in Hong Kong, but until this time I really did not know him well and I was faintly alarmed when, in one of his letters, he added a P.S. to the effect that he didn't quite know how much money he wished to dispose of but the last time he had looked at it the sum was around £15 million (it transpired in the end to be much more than that). I was somewhat more alarmed when, after our first meeting, he seemed to have decided that I was the man for him and henceforth seemed unwilling to do anything about his proposed charitable activity unless I approved of it. He told me that his first priority would be to see that outstanding young Hong Kong Chinese graduates in science, technology, or medicine should be enabled to develop their talents further by postgraduate work in the United Kingdom or elsewhere in the British Commonwealth. That done, he would like to promote activities which would benefit Hong Kong and raise the standard of its higher educational institutions. For the rest, he was prepared to help promote cooperation with China but did not wish to be active in Singapore, Taiwan, or other strongholds of overseas Chinese where he felt there was already plenty of money if they would only use it properly. He did not want to have his money spent on bricks and mortar and he had no time for sociology and very little for social science in general! Noel agreed that a Trust or Foundation should be set up and after some persuasion he agreed to be its first chairman, but only if I would be his vice-chairman and would undertake as such to get it going and to succeed him if anything should happen to him. He was readily agreeable to his lawyer, Ian MacCallum, also being a Trustee, and we persuaded him to add Dr Rayson Huang, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong and Sir John Butterfield, Master of Downing College and Professor of Physic in the University of Cambridge. Sir John was not merely eminent in British medicine but had, through the Hong Kong University and Polytechnic Grants Committee, substantial knowledge of medicine and science in Hong Kong institutions. In due course a Trust Deed setting up the Noel Croucher Foundation was drawn up and signed by Noel and his four Trustees in November 1979. A further Trustee in the person of Mr Michael Sandberg, chairman of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, was appointed in 1980.

The reason for my family's amusement at this time is now obvious. In fact I had resigned the relatively simple task of being chairman of a well-established Foundation with an efficient administration only to find myself virtually in charge of a Foundation of not dissimilar size with no organisation whatever. To complete the story, I have to record that Noel, to our great regret, died suddenly following a massive heart attack in February 1980, leaving me with the task of getting the Foundation off the ground; the Foundation's size, and responsibilities were not diminished by the fact that, under the terms of Noel's will, it became residuary legatee of his estate. The history of the beginnings and the development of the Croucher Foundation will in due course be recorded; suffice to say now, that it has been in operation since Noel's death and has made a number of grants to the universities in Hong Kong and awarded a substantial number of scholarships and fellowships for research. I confess that, although it may have been tedious work from time to time, I have enjoyed my part in the Foundation's development and I believe we are operating in accordance with our Founder's wishes. Needless to say, being in charge of a charitable foundation with its seat in Hong Kong, I am now an even more frequent visitor to the colony!