Most of the stars discussed at this week's international astrophysics symposium at the University of Hong Kong are millions of years old, but one of them is just 86 years young, and a product of the city's education system.
Clifford Matthews, a professor emeritus of the University of Illinois at Chicago, was one of 180 scientists from 20 countries attending a five-day meeting of the International Astronomical Union to discuss 'Organic Matter in Space - the Quest for Life's Origins'.
The meeting, which ended yesterday, was the first held in the city since the union was formed in 1919. The IAU represents the world's top astroscientists.
Professor Matthews, who gave an anecdotal speech at the symposium dinner on Thursday night and delivered a closing scientific paper - 'Hydrogen Cyanide Polymers are the Bridge Between Cosmochemistry and Biochemistry in Space' - yesterday afternoon, is a star not just for his controversial theory about how life started, but also for his long personal history with Hong Kong.
Explaining his theory he said: 'Hydrogen cyanide is a very common molecule in space, and what our research has shown over the years is that, chemically, it joins to itself, polymerises and form long chains very readily. That's a key point.
'We've pointed out that these chains are all over space. They're connected with comets, meteorites and elsewhere, and on the early Earth it's believed there was a bombardment of meteorites, and especially comets, and that brought a lot of these hydrogen cyanide polymers.