Follow the Chemistry: Lure, Lore and Life

The following sections are included:

• Dedication

• Contents

• Prologue

• Acknowledgements

It was in the small town of Ipoh, in a rich tin-bearing valley of the Kinta River in Perak of British Malaya, where my first recollection of anything began with a rude awakening in the dead of night by anxious adult chatter, my maternal grandmother's excited voice being distinct. The drone of invading Japanese airplanes was obvious as they flew low, and the adults were discussing about taking shelter in the tunnel below. Unfortunately water had collected in it, so no one went in. Although too young to understand the implications of all this, I could sense an element of fear, but fortunately there was no tragedy in that countryside. It was years later that I became aware that our whole extended family was then taking refuge from Japanese invaders in the home of a wealthy tin-miner friend of my parents and grandparents in the village of Tronoh (see map overleaf). Strangely, I have absolutely no recollection of the house or the environs. On that same occasion, someone mentioned that tiny maggots were growing in the rice stored for a long period of time in view of scarcity. For a young impressionable mind, this incident had created a lasting paranoid fear of creeping and crawling creatures even though those are just common weevils…

After the Japanese had left, life began to return to normal. One evening, I overheard my parents discussing school options for me, and deciding that the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ) was the best for girls, as it was an English school noted for strict discipline of girls, a school which trained and expected its girls to follow its motto 'Simple dans Ma Virtu, Forte dans Mon Devoir': Simple in Virtue, Steadfast in Duty. So I was registered there…

Coming back to the main course of historical events, my father was transferred to a very small town, Alor Star, the capital of the northern state of Kedah, on a job promotion. My mother had to manage the moving — lock, stock and barrel — in addition to caring for six children. Tending to the daily needs of a brood of six young ones must have been very stressful, with my youngest brother Kai Fatt barely one year old. Fortunately, she could enlist the assistance of aunt Yuet, who was unmarried and was housekeeping for a family in Singapore, to accompany us. In the hustle and bustle of things, my mother broke a mirror while taking it down from a wall. I remember being very fearful as I watched, having read in fairy tales of seven years of bad luck following such events, and coincidence or otherwise, we did suffer some of that in the next few years! The day for good-byes came, and we started the day's long steam-engined train journey to Alor Star, accompanied also by a cousin brother of my mother (Uncle Leong). The journey carried us through continuous flat expanses of green rice-fields, prevalent in the whole state of Kedah — a monotonous scenery till we reached our destination. In Alor Star, the PWD was short of quarters for its employees, and unable to arrange for any sort of decent rentable private housing in town. In an adjoining kampong (meaning: village), my father found and rented a semi-detached wooden house with a detached 'backyard toilet'. Such inconveniences were common in rural environments in those days. I recall feeling very sad when Uncle Leong left us after a week to return to the relative comforts of Ipoh…

Back in Ipoh, all nine of us were housed again in two rooms in my grandmother's shophouse at 39 Theatre Street. My father's primary concern was to get us older children back to school. My brother was readily readmitted into Anderson School, my father's Alma Mater. At the CHIJ, he had to do a bit of imploring and pleading with the principal, Reverend Mother Pauline, a humble yet reverent figure from the West who had found her way to this small town Ipoh convent. She was later transferred to CHIJ at Bukit Nanas in Kuala Lumpur, and then to CHIJ in Bukit Mertajam in Province Wellesley, opposite the island of Penang, as she neared retirement. We only learnt years later from her obituary that she was a holder of the prestigious Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Chicago, and that was after I had obtained my own degree. When my father brought me to see her about re-admission to CHIJ, she insisted that I took a mathematics assessment test on the spot, which I did and she told my father the result was 'a bit weak!' However, she readmitted me into Standard 3, that is, at the level as where I should be, if without my recent school interruptions. It was already into the third (last) term of the school year, three months to final examination. It was really tough to play catch-up after having missed all the lessons of the preceding eight months, but fortunately I passed the year after all. My sister Lai Kien was to start school the following year, but there were still the three younger siblings not yet of school-going age…

The year I finished Form 5 was the second year of Form 6 education in Malayan schools. Admission was by merit for the first graders in the CSLCE. Form 6 was a two-years' prelude to university, and in Ipoh was only tenable in the three premier boys' schools, namely, Anderson School (non-religious, government, just past its centenary), Anglo-Chinese Boys' School (Methodist, government-aided, 124 years old now) or St. Michael's Institution (SMI) (LaSallian, Catholic, government-aided, centenary in 2012). It was customary for the girls from CHIJ to proceed to SMI and that was where we went, ten of us majoring in Science and a handful in Arts. The class size of 24 in Form 6 was half that of secondary school classes in CHIJ; consequently we grew to know everyone in class pretty well. I had the privilege to be Head Prefect again to represent the girls in the four Form 6 classes. Coming from CHIJ, where orderliness and cleanliness reigned supreme, where furniture and the floors shone with polishing, so much so that they could be slippery, we girls could not tolerate the worn dirty-looking desks and floor of our class room. CHIJ was privileged to have sheltered and nurtured many war orphan girls, many of whom had disabilities but were able to help in the maintenance of the school premises. In SMI, we got down to a tedious scrubbing-washing job, only to find that it was really tough dealing with an uneven floor coated with sunken-in dirt, and so we never attempted it again! Instead, we initiated other projects for the school; under the guidance of a Physics teacher — Mr. Yong Man Fong — a Physics graduate of UM, we fixed up a public address system; the boys and tomboys among us girls climbed up ladders to do the wiring job. We had other very competent graduate teachers; the Chemistry teacher was the late Mr. Lee Guan Meng, whose daughter was to become my sister-in-law. Of particular mention is a newly-arrived Brother Corkery Vincent, scholar of political thought from University College, Dublin. I remember him giving us refreshing ideas in creative writing in English Literature and in the discussion of current issues and affairs for the General Paper. After the launch in 1957 of the world's first artificial satellite SPUTNIK I by the USSR, he pitched our Science class in a provocative debate against our Arts counterpart, with Science proposing 'Macbeth is a greater creation than the Sputnik', where I had the privilege to lead the team. He later served as director in the 1970s and 1980s, succeeding Brother Ultan Paul, whose 60 years on-and-off association with SMI had made him an endearing pillar of strength and encouragement to all around in SMI and Ipoh…

There were benefits to be back in KL for an interim period. In a way, I was homesick and was keen to be home or nearer home in Ipoh. In those days, communication was via letters or telegrams for urgent matters. I wrote weekly or biweekly letters to my father who always replied promptly. Imagine me describing to him, an engineer, my first observation of beautiful crystals in organic chemistry laboratory in my second Year! My command of the Chinese language was not sufficient for me to write to my mother in Chinese, though I had had home tuition in Chinese by a private tutor. I regretted then that I had not gone with my brother Cheong to the night Chinese School of Ho Tih Ann (my mother's teacher), which was just opposite 39 Theatre Street where we had lived for about five years. Cheong could write to my mother in Chinese. I hardly wrote to my siblings, knowing that my father would pass on my news to them. Thus I was slightly out of touch with them. Brother Cheong had started studying Medicine in the University of Malaya in Singapore. Sister Lai Kien had proceeded to Trinity College Dublin for a course in physiotherapy. Sisters Lai Fong and Lai Kam were already in upper secondary school in the CHIJ, all performing well, in the 'legacy of the eldest Wong sister!' so they said. The youngest brother Kai Fatt was in secondary school in Anderson. Previously I had been home for two summer vacations, travelling by ship, as customary in those days of relatively expensive air-travel. Contrary to our earlier dreary voyages of 1949–1950 to Hong Kong, these two sea-trips were actually enjoyable, being berthed in cabins shared with Malayan university girl friends. It was like the beginning of a small cruise liner in its days in infancy. On one occasion, the ship stopped over in Manila, and we had a tour of the city, guided by two Filipino fellow passengers…

I arrived in Heathrow on January 5, 1965 on a bleak wintry morning, took an airport bus to Victoria Station where by previous arrangement I was met by Wong Ka Wing, a girl two years my senior in HKU, then pursuing a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in Bedford College, London. We went to Chelsea to get me checked into Crosby Hall, a residential hall for university women (British and Commonwealth). The Hall was opened by Queen Mary in 1927 and I had found out that it was sold in 1992. The premises were old but imposing, especially by the dark long but wide hall with a huge high-table at one end in front of a large mural. It appeared to resemble a hall that I had seen in films of Henry the Eighth and it had struck me as eerie. This served as the dining hall. We next went to Oxford Street to shop for my settling-in requirements. I was tired out by jet-lag and my shoulders were weighed down by a heavy winter coat. I felt miserable seeing the unfamiliar gloomy skies in the early hours of the afternoon and later losing my way on the return to Crosby Hall, despite holding and referring to the 'London A to Z' travel guide book! The following day saw me making my way by bus and the Underground to University College in Gower Street…

The flight from Heathrow took me to Montreal where I met Swee Hock (SH) to spend a week at the first World Trade Exhibition (EXPO '67). It was a hectic few days in the summer heat in the crowded EXPO grounds where a huge beautiful geodesic buckminsterfullerene-like structure (see back cover page) was highly conspicuous even before buckminsterfullerene (C₆₀), named after R. Buckminster Fuller (1897–1985) was to be discovered (1985). Rational synthesis of such a large molecule remained beyond presently available methodologies although cubane (C₈H₈) had been around (Chicago, 1965) while tetrahedrane (C₄H₄) derivatives and dodecahedrane (C₂₀H₂₀) were later synthesized. Accommodated in a youth hostel, we travelled daily in the subway train, which was remarkably clean, being newly completed in time for the EXPO. As we walked the streets, we also noticed the relaxed living style of the Montrealites, sitting on their front verandahs to watch the world go by, understandably also to get reprieve from the summer heat, as many were manually fanning themselves…

It was with a sense of hope and aspiration and a will to serve our young nation in its only institution of higher learning, that I assumed duty as a lecturer in the Department of Chemistry, UM, on 15 August 1968 (see picture overleaf). The university was founded on the model of British universities of that age. Hence the hierarchy of academic staff was Assistant Lecturer, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader (for a staff of professorial merit but with no available chair) and Professor. Traditionally each department had only one Professor who was also head of department (HOD) by virtue of his appointment. Professorships were appointment posts, not promotional positions. Rayson Huang was the founding Professor of Chemistry and was HOD since 1959. 1968 had seen the retirement of the founding Vice Chancellor Professor Alexander Oppenheim (renowned mathematician of Oppenheim Conjecture fame, 1929) in 1965, followed by two Acting Vice Chancellors, namely Rayson L. Huang and Chin Fung Kee, Professor of Engineering, each serving one year until Dr. James H. E. Griffiths, distinguished physicist from Oxford, was appointed in 1967…

The following sections are included:

• To Chicago Again

• To Cornell University

• To the Australian National University

• To Texas A & M University

With early research training in investigations on very basic processes in inorganic/organometallic chemistry, viz. the formation and cleavage of carbon–cobalt bonds in organocobalt complexes, I had inculcated more interest in basic research than in the applied. As an inorganic chemist, I see vast opportunities in the chemistry of the non-carbon elements in the Periodic Table. As an organometallic chemist in the 1960s, when Vitamin B12 coenzyme was the only stable σ-bonded cobalt–carbon complex known and a naturally-occurring one for that, and when chemists were attempting to find the rationale for the instability of metal-carbon bonds, I saw in my mind's eye long and varied avenues of research opportunities for the chemistry of compounds of carbon with its metal or non-metal counterparts in the Periodic Table. Thus it was that my earliest attempts at independent research revolved around the reactivity of pentacyanocobaltate(II) with bridgehead carbon species and of various chromium(II) species with arylalkyl halides. These cobalt(II) and chromium(II) species behaved like radicals towards organic halides, forming organometallic compounds…

Participation at conferences, particularly at international levels, is today considered a crucial part of frontier research activity. Nowadays, even graduate students in reputable universities are supported to participate in poster presentation. Unfortunately many obstacles had to be faced during my tenure in UM; despite being sited in a research-isolated location, support for such activities had been very low on the agenda, as mentioned earlier. I have always maintained the firm belief that interaction with overseas peers at conferences is important. As research progressed to a productive stage, I had availed myself of as many opportunities as possible to present the results in oral or poster presentations at conferences, despite being out-of-pocket as a result, being only partially funded by foreign and out-of-university sources, e.g. IKM and Lee Foundation. Thus, I had kept a regular attendance since 1984, when I was invited to participate in a memorial session for the late Professor Muetterties, who had passed away the year before. That occasion was a one-day symposium within the 188th ACS National Meeting in Philadelphia, and I was glad to meet again some of Muetterties group, especially Mrs. Muetterties and for the first time Patricia Watson (Muetterties' first Ph.D. student in Cornell University) and Victor Day (the collaborating crystallographer). On the home journey, I stopped over in Chicago to visit Professor and Mrs. Halpern, who hosted me in their lovely Hyde Park home, where I had previous occasions of enjoying their lovely annual dinner parties for the research group. I was very happy also to meet again with Professor N. C. Yang at UC…

The years passed by rapidly and several professional activities were completed on course, such as serving on the sub-committee for Chemistry Terminology in Bahasa Malaysia (Malay), as external examiner for B.Sc. London External Examinations (Practical Chemistry, 1973–1980) and for the Graduate School, Universiti Pertanian Malaysia (1988–1995), as an elected Science Faculty representative to the Senate of UM (1982–1990), as national representative on IUPAC Commission on the Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry (1983–1987, and again presently), as a representative of the Malaysian Institute of Chemistry (IKM) in a seminar on 'The Role of Women in Higher Education. Implications for Higher Education in South-East Asia,' organized by the Ministry of Education of Malaysia and the Association of Southeast Asian Institute of Higher Learning (1975), and as a consultant to local firms on timber preservation and phosphate fertilizers (1980–1985). In the Malaysia Section of the Royal Society of Chemistry London, I was a committee member (1987–1989), and chairperson (1989–1991). In IKM, I had served as Inorganic Chemistry examiner for its Licentiate Membership (1985–1994), and on occasions been a member of its Council, and of its committees for Publications and Conference Organizations, and continually as referee for its journal, Kimia, a Malaysian Journal of Chemistry. In 2001, I received the Gold Medal of the Institute (given annually to long-term members in recognition of 'chemistry' contribution to the nation), and also the Gold Medal of Rotary Club Malaysia Research Foundation Awards in 2003. Lately I was elected a Fellow of the Malaysian Academy of Science. The IKM award carries with it a cash component in addition to the medal. As my husband SH had done before me, I had matched twice the cash value and donated to the IKM branch in my native silver state of Perak for the promotion of Chemistry. That branch had utilised the money to set up the biannual 'The Professor Goh Lai Yoong Challenge Trophy Perak Inter-school Form Six Chemistry Quiz', the inaugural one of which was held in 2002 in my Alma Mater CHIJ. The recent such occasion, held last February in Yuk Choy Secondary School, gave me an opportunity to give a talk on 'Challenges and Opportunities in Chemistry', with some highlights on availability of courses in NTU. It is gratifying to note that similar happenings of the last few years had helped to raise the level of interest in Chemistry among the young students in Perak…

Around mid-1990s, as it was mandatory to retire at age 55, I left the University of Malaya after twenty seven years of service. In that span of time, the staff establishment in Chemistry Department had doubled to over forty, with post-1986 headship passing from K. C. Chan, through V. G. K. Das to C. C. Ho. During that time, it was customary for UM to give all its staff (academic and non-academic) a long service award in the form of a gift after twenty years of service. At the same time it was also customary for most academic staff in the Chemistry Department to leave quietly after a lifetime of loyal service, without a farewell gesture/note of appreciation from the department or the university leadership. There had been extremes of reactions from some retired staff — from one who would not step back into the department to another who stayed on as he could flexibly blend in with the system. Perhaps many did not realise that the retirement identity card prepared for them by the University Security Office was that token of appreciation. But I had reasoned that at 35 years after its rebirth in 1959 as the branch in KL, UM needed more time to acquire the finesse of maturity that I had observed in century-old institutions, like Cornell or TAMU. It is of my opinion that a matter of concern to UM need not be the sentiment of some retired academics, but rather winning back the goodwill and loyalty of the forgotten alumni, the treasured human assets of most foreign institutions of today…

With a D.Sc. degree in hand and the support of then Dean of Science at NUS, Lee Soo Ying, I was offered a contract position as senior fellow in the Chemistry Department. I assumed duty in early July 1997, but my short-term stay there lasted as many as ten years, during which period I had good support from the Dean (E. C. Tan) and the various HODs (H. Chan, Y. H. Lai, H. K. Lee and A. T. S. Hor). It had been a busy and satisfying decade, involved in full-time teaching, examination of theses of graduate students, and research in a well-funded institution. There I had observed a scholarly attitude among a core group of students, who were diligently involved in research projects. The other extreme was a small non-core group, who were apparently in for Science and Chemistry not of their choice but as a last resort and hence would vent their frustrations at feedback opportunities. With moderate and adequate research funding from the Faculty and good infrastructural support from the Department, I had been able to guide and train a fair number of Honours and graduate students in research. It enabled me to resume research in organochromium chemistry, which further illustrated the wealth of reactivity patterns between specific radical species and various substrates, yielding compounds which possess yet more complexity and beauty in structural designs, illustrated in two examples below…

The following sections are included:

• Family

• At Leisure

• Trivia

The following sections are included:

• Epilogue — Reflections

• APPENDIX I List of Acronyms

• APPENDIX II Selected List of Journal Publications

• APPENDIX III Published Conference Abstracts and Proceedings