Leroy Li-Gong Chang

CHANG, LEROY LI-GONG Sunday, August 10, 2008, Leroy Li-Gong Chang passed away surrounded by his loving family. Leroy was born January 20, 1936 in the city of Kaifeng, Henan Province, China. He was the third of five children of Chang Shenfu, a mining engineer, and Lee Hsiang-heng, a teacher and later a legislator in the Chinese government. During the years of the Second World War, Leroy lived in the wartime capital of Chongqing, returning to Beijing before moving to Taichung, Taiwan, with his family in 1948 in the last days of the Chinese civil war. Upon graduating from National Taiwan University in 1957 with a Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, he served in Taiwan's military and went to the United States in 1961. On the boat to America, he met and later married Helen Hsiang-Yung Chang. In the course of a 46-year marriage, he was a devoted husband and a loving father of two children, Justin and Leslie. After receiving a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1963, Leroy joined the IBM Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. Over a three-decade career there, he made pioneering contributions in the fields of semiconductor physics, materials and devices, low-dimensional electron systems, and quantum- and nanostructures. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Academia Sinica, and the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences. He was a recipient of the David Sarnoff Award and the Stuart Ballantine Medal. Leroy always maintained close ties with China, the land of his birth. He returned to the country for the first time in 1975 in a delegation of high-level scientists and went back frequently thereafter, guiding and training China's leading physicists to achievements in the international arena. In the early 1990s, Leroy was one of the chief architects behind the formation of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and was instrumental in building and nurturing it into a world-class research institution. He served as the university's Dean of the School of Science and later as its Vice-President for Academic Affairs. In 2001, he and Helen moved to Poway, enjoying an active retirement of international travel and visits with family and a network of friends that spanned the globe. Though his colleagues in the worlds of science, engineering and academia will remember his brilliance and myriad achievements in his field, what his family and friends most treasured were his great sense of humor; his compassion, generosity, and zest for life that he shared with all who knew him; and his great range of interests that included politics, history, investing, wine, Scrabble, chess, bridge, and planting trees. Leroy leaves his wife, Helen; son, Justin; daughter, Leslie; brother, Luke; sisters Nellie and Irene; and three granddaugh-ters, Alexandra, Annabelle, and Audrey.