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University of Hong Kong
EDUCATION
The University of Hong Kong was established in 1911 with a land grant from the govern- ment and endowments that have since been increased. Substantial government grants also are made towards the university's annual recurrent and non-recurrent expenditure.
Undergraduate places available in the various faculties and schools in the 1979–80 academic year were: arts 1,018; science 605; medicine 770; engineering 778; social sciences 740; architecture 240; and law 162. There were also 1,400 places for post-graduate students: 650 reading for higher degrees and 750 for diplomas and certificates.
In addition to courses leading to Bachelor degrees, the university offers post-graduate courses leading to the degrees of Master of Arts, Master of Science in Engineering, Master of Social Sciences, Master of Social Work, Master of Business Administration, Master of Medical Sciences, and Master of Education. There is also provision for the research degrees of Doctor of Philosophy, Master of Philosophy, Doctor of Medicine, and Master of Surgery, as well as doctorates in Letters, Science, Social Sciences and Law. Certificates and diplomas are obtainable in the fields of law, education, psychology, various engineering subjects, Chinese language, medical sciences, and management studies.
In 1980, the university will admit the first group of students to read for the new degree of Bachelor of Dental Surgery.
The Department of Extramural Studies in 1979 provided 585 evening and day courses in a wide variety of vocational and professional fields for more than 17,000 adult students. The number of full-time teaching posts (including demonstratorships) at the university at the beginning of the 1979-80 academic year was 629.
The number of volumes held in the university's libraries in 1979 comprised 300,000 in the general library, 216,000 in the Fung Ping Shan Chinese Library, 47,000 in the medical library and 17,000 in the law library.
Research
In the Faculty of Arts, research is progressing into aspects of both the Chinese and English languages and literatures; the philosophy of language; the history of Chinese arts with special reference to painting; soil conditions; meteorology; biogeography; transportation and population geography; urban development; Chinese history; and Hong Kong history. The Faculty of Science is engaged in research into the ecology of marine and freshwater organisms; the physiology and metabolism of fish with application to pond and marine culture; parasites in humans and animals; the endocrinology of reproduction and foetal development; agricultural pests; nerve endings in the back muscles of scoliotic patients; the structure and function of avian muscle stretch receptors; the genetics, development and cell biology of unicellular animals; fouling problems in freshwater pipelines and sea-water intakes; pollution studies on Hong Kong roadside plants; the cell and tissue culture of some important local crop plants; studies of local industrial and consumer products; studies of environmental problems which involve analytical skill and instrumentation; pure mathematics; numerical weather prediction and application of operational research tech- niques; development of teaching materials for mathematics; local ionospheric and geomag- netic phenomena; cosmic rays; gemstones; solid state physics; plasma physics; elementary particles physics; and quantum mechanics and relativity.
The Faculty of Medicine is conducting research into the growth and development of Chinese children; congenital diseases; common hereditary anaemias in Chinese; immune response to infections; prevalence, aetiology and treatment of common malignancies in Hong Kong; diabetes mellitus; hypertension; liver diseases; spinal deformities; contracep-