Brief History of the Faculty

The Faculty of Science came into existence in 1963. At the time, the Departments of Mathematics (1954), Chemistry (1956), Physics (1956) and Biology (1957) co-existed in the respective Colleges as independent yet closely affiliated units. In 1970 and 1973, the Department of Electronic Engineering and the Department of Computer Science were founded respectively. These two departments offered the pioneering engineering programmes in the early days and later left the Faculty of Science to form the new Faculty of Engineering in August 1991. On the other hand, the Biochemistry Department - a joint venture of the Faculties of Medicine and Science - was established in 1971. In 1982, the Statistics element broke away from the Mathematics Department to become a full-fledged Statistics Department.

The first M.Phil. and Ph.D. programmes were introduced in 1969 and 1981 respectively. At the undergraduate level, the Faculty took part in the offering of two part-time study programmes. The first part-time programme in Mathematics and Statistics was launched in 1989-90 and the second part-time programme in Biology and Chemistry in 1990-91. These were phased out in the 1995-1998 triennium beginning 1994-95 in view of the increased provision of similar kind of courses by other tertiary institutions and the diminishing pool of applicants due to expanded opportunities for full-time studies.

With the redeployment of resources to the development of full-time programmes, the Faculty devoted its attention to the launch of seven new undergraduate interdisciplinary programmes - Environmental Science (1994), Food & Nutritional Sciences (1994), Materials Science (1998, later renamed as Materials Science and Engineering in 2001), Molecular Biotechnology (1998), Chinese Medicine (1999), Risk Management Science (2000), and Applied Chemistry with Management Studies (2001). The Chinese Medicine Programme is now administered under the School of Chinese Medicine of the Faculty.