Founding in 1912 The origins of the University of Hong Kong can be traced back to the
Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese, founded in 1887 by
Ho Kai (later known as Sir Kai Ho Kai). It was renamed the Hong Kong College of Medicine in 1907. The college was later incorporated as
HKU's medical school in 1911. The University of Hong Kong was founded in 1911. The
colony's governor,
Sir Frederick Lugard (1858–1945), first proposed in January 1908 during a graduation ceremony at
St Stephen's College to establish a university in Hong Kong to compete with the other Great Powers opening universities in China, most notably
Germany, which had just opened the
Tongji German Medical School in Shanghai. Sir Lugard saw the establishment of the university as an opportunity to promote British culture to China and the Chinese people through education, in turn enhancing Britain's influence in the
Far East. He quoted saying, "We must either now take those opportunities or leave them for others to take...".
Sir Hormusjee Naorojee Mody, an Indian
Parsi businessman in Hong Kong, learned of Lugard's plan and pledged to donate towards the construction and towards other costs. The
Hong Kong Government and the business sector in southern China, which were both equally eager to learn "secrets of the West's success" (referring to technological advances made since the
Industrial Revolution), also gave their support. The Government contributed a site at West Point.
Swire Group contributed to endow a chair in Engineering, in addition to thousands of dollars in equipment (its aim was partly to bolster its corporate image following the death of a passenger on board one of its ships,
SS Fatshan, and the subsequent unrest stirred by the Self-Government Society). Along with donations from other donors including the
British government and companies such as
HSBC, Lugard finally had enough to fund the building of the university. Charles Eliot was appointed the university's first vice-chancellor. The university was incorporated in Hong Kong as a self-governing body of scholars on 30 March 1911 and had its official opening ceremony on 11 March 1912. It was founded as an all-male institution; women were admitted for the first time ten years later. The Faculty of Medicine was previously founded as the
Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese by the
London Missionary Society in 1887. Of the college's early alumni, the most renowned was
Sun Yat-sen, In 1927, a degree in Chinese was created. Donations from wealthy businessmen Tang Chi Ngong and Fung Ping Shan – after whom two campus buildings are named – triggered an emphasis on Chinese cultural education. In 1937, the
Queen Mary Hospital opened. It has served as the university's teaching hospital ever since. In 1941, the
Japanese invasion of Hong Kong caused damage to university buildings, and the university closed until 1945; during this period, the university's medical school moved to
Chengdu.
1945 to 2001 After the end of the
Second World War, the university reopened and investment in law and the
social sciences increased as post-war reconstruction efforts began in earnest. The Faculty of Social Sciences was established in 1967 and the
Department of Law in 1969. The student population in 1961 was 2,000, quadrupled from 1941, and in 1980 the number of students exceeded 5,500. In 1982, the
Faculty of Dentistry, based at the
Prince Philip Dental Hospital, was established. To this day, it remains Hong Kong's only faculty training dental professionals. In 1984, both the School of Architecture and School of Education became fully-fledged faculties and in the same year the
Faculty of Law was created. The Faculty of Business and Economics was established in 2001 as the university's tenth and youngest faculty. After 1989, the Hong Kong government began to emphasise local tertiary education in order to retain local students who would otherwise have studied abroad in the United Kingdom. Student places and course variety were greatly increased in preparation for the
handover of Hong Kong. By 2001, the number of students had grown to 14,300 and the number of degree courses to over a hundred.
2001 to present In 2002,
Growing with Hong Kong: The University and Its Graduates — The First 90 Years was published by the
Hong Kong University Press as a study of the impact of HKU's graduates on Hong Kong. In January 2006, despite protest from a portion of students and alumni, the Faculty of Medicine was renamed as the
Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine "to recognize the generosity of Mr
Li and his Foundation as well as the wish of the donors to support, in addition to the general development of the University, research and academic activities in medicine." On 16 August 2011,
Li Keqiang,
Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China, began a three-day visit to promote development between Hong Kong and
mainland China. The university was locked down. The mishandling by the police force caused the
Hong Kong 818 incident. On 30 August 2011, the university council resolved to set up a panel to review issues arising from the vice premier's visit, to improve arrangements and to set up policies for future university events that are consistent with its commitment to freedom of expression. From 2010 to 2012, the university celebrated its 100th anniversary and the opening of the Centennial Campus at the western end of the university site in
Pokfulam.
The University of Hong Kong–Shenzhen Hospital, one of the two
teaching hospitals of the university, also opened in 2011. On 10 April 2015, HKU declared itself as the first university in the world to join
HeForShe, a UN Women initiative urging men to achieve more female rights. The university promised that it would triple the number of female dean-level members by 2020, so that more than 1 out of every 5 deans would be women. On 15 December 2017, the university's governing council appointed
University of California, Berkeley nanoscience professor
Xiang Zhang to the posts of President and Vice-Chancellor with effect from January 2018. Zhang was the first vice-chancellor of the university born in mainland China and educated to undergraduate degree level there. On 4 September 2023, the university announced the appointment of
Fraser Stoddart, a
chemist and
Nobel Laureate, as a Chair Professor. Stoddart has been a Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry at
Northwestern University, Illinois, United States, for the past 16 years. at the age of 82. On 17 October 2025, the university announced the appointment of
Ferenc Krausz as Chair Professor at the Department of Physics. Krausz was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with
Pierre Agostini and
Anne L'Huillier in 2023 "for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter." They generated and measured the first
attosecond light pulse and used it to capture
electron motion inside atoms, marking the birth of
attophysics.
2015 political interference The HKU Council made headlines in 2015 for alleged political interference behind the selection process for a new pro-vice chancellor. A selection committee unanimously recommended the council appoint
Johannes Chan to the post, which involved the responsibility for staffing and resources, and which had been left vacant for five years. Chan, the former dean of the Faculty of Law, was a distinguished scholar in constitutional law and human rights and "a vocal critic on Hong Kong's political reform issues". Owing to his liberal political stance, Chan was roundly criticised by Communist Party-controlled media including
Wen Wei Po,
Ta Kung Pao, and
Global Times, which together published at least 350 articles attacking him. Customarily the HKU Council accepts the recommendations of search committees for senior posts, with no prior recommendation having been rejected by the council. The council was criticised when it delayed the decision to appoint Chan, stating that it should wait until a new provost was in place. Finally, in September 2015, the council rejected Chan's appointment (12 votes to eight) through an anonymous vote in a closed meeting, providing no reason for the decision. The decision is seen widely viewed as a pro-government act of retaliation against "pro-democracy leaders and participants" and a blow to academic freedom. Five members are delegates to the
National People's Congress in Beijing and, as such, are obliged to toe the Communist Party line or risk expulsion. In overall Council makeup, university students and staff are outnumbered by members from outside the university. The law faculty also refuted the allegations against Chan. Billy Fung, student union president, revealed details of the discussion to the public and was subsequently expelled from the council. ==Campuses==