President Emeritus Yuan-Tseh Lee received an honorary doctorate degree June 15 at the University of Ottawa’s spring Convocation for his lifetime achievements in fields of science that promise a better standard of living for people.

In Dr. Lee’s acceptance speech, he said, “It is not the strongest of the species that will survive, or the most intelligent; it is the most adaptable to change.” He quoted this statement of Charles Darwin, whose 200th birthday is being celebrated globally this year. Dr. Lee stated that if the environment changes more quickly than the rate of a given species can evolve and adapt, the likely fate of that species will be extinction. Unless the human species manages to slow down the change of the climate and environment, the fate of extinction might be inevitable.

 “I believe that this is the first time in human history that all human beings on earth are faced with having to work together and live together as one family in a global village,” Lee said. “Our future depends entirely on how effectively the entire world would function as one community. This is a necessary awakening – vital for the survival and sustainable development of mankind.”

Dr. Lee was elected an Academician in 1980 and served as president of Academia Sinica from 1994 to 2006. He is a Distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences and Genomics Research Center. He has received numerous awards and honors, including Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science (1975); Member of U.S. National Academy of Sciences (1979); Ernest O. Lawrence Award, U.S. Department of Energy (1981); Peter Debye Award of Physical Chemistry, American Chemical Society (1986); National Medal of Science, White House, U.S.A. (1986); Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1986); Corresponding Member, Gottingen Academy of Sciences, Germany (1988); Faraday Medal, Royal Society of Chemistry, London, U.K. (1992); The Honorary Foreign Member, Indian National Science Academy (1997); The Clark Kerr Award, University of California at Berkeley (1999); Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Medal, Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, India (2004); Academician of Pontifical Academy of Science (2007); and Othmer Gold Medal, The Chemical Heritage Foundation, U.S.A. (2008).

Dr. Lee is passionately committed to the advancement of scientific research, as well as to social issues. He was elected president of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and will take up the appointment in 2010. The ICSU was founded in 1931 to promote international scientific activity in the different branches of science and its application for the benefit of humanity. It represents the evolution and expansion of two earlier bodies known as the International Association of Academies (IAA; 1899-1914) and the International Research Council (IRC; 1919-1931).

The University of Ottawa was funded in 1848, and is one of Canada’s historic and significant research universities, with about 35,000 students. Recently, under the auspices of the National Science Council (NSC), the university has been cooperating with Taiwan scholars in the fields of Biomedical Engineering, Nanotechnology, light particles, etc.