Li Chong Chan was chair of pathology and director of the centre for humanities and medicine at the University of Hong Kong. He was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the son of Chan Tech Cheong and Cheong Yut Ying. He was educated at the Victoria Institution, Kuala Lumpur and then studied medicine at Trinity College, Cambridge and King’s College Hospital Medical School, London.

He held house posts in Kent, and was then a senior house officer and registrar in the clinical and laboratory haematology department at King’s College Hospital.

From 1981 to 1982 he was a Leukaemia Research Fund fellow and an honorary registrar in the department of haematology and oncology at Great Ormond Street Hospital. He was then spent a clinical research fellow in the department of membrane immunology, Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories, London. From 1984 to 1987 he was a researcher at the Leukaemia Research Fund Centre, Institute of Cancer Research, London. He was then a clinical research fellow and an honorary senior registrar in haematology at St George’s Hospital, London.

In April 1989, he was appointed as a senior lecturer and honorary consultant in the department of academic haematology, Royal Marsden Hospital. In October of the same year he moved to Hong Kong, where he was senior lecturer and head of the haematology section, department of pathology, University of Hong Kong. From 1996 he was professor and head of the haematology section in the department of pathology. He later became director of the centre for humanities and medicine at the university.

He was given the International Medical University-Ron Harden Innovation in Medical Education award at the International Medical Education Conference in 2010 and an outstanding teaching award by the University of Hong Kong in 2013. Li Chong Chan was found dead at his home, having apparently taken his own life.

Outside medicine he enjoyed travel, reading and cooking.

In 1979 he married Cheuk Wan Ping (Penny), an orthodontist. They had a son and a daughter.

RCP editor