It's hard to define Tso Wung-wai - a bio-chemistry professor who refuses to hide behind the veneer of authority, an educator who entertains as much as he educates, or a politician who spends more time popularizing science than his own ideals.

These days, the 67-year-old calls himself "Dr Tso" when making a phone call - not because he's fond of the title, but because people would instantly know who's on the other side of the line.

In media, however, he is best known for debunking pseudo-sciences.

Tso Wung-wai. Edmond Tang

"I am a protector and a salesman of science," he said.

While that mission has endeared him to the media since the early 1980s, it has also raised quite a few eyebrows.

"Some people may accuse me of 'trespassing' into other spheres, mass media for example," he said. "But as far as I'm concerned, I have been alternatively practical and idealistic, but never static."

He organizes IQ competitions and young inventors' contests, writes for newspaper columns, publishes books and occasionally travels abroad where he searches book markets for old science writings.

"I might have taken up too many sidelines, but ATP is like dollars. The more you use, the more you possess," Tso said, scribbling on a piece of tissue paper to explain what ATP is. (ATP stands for adenosine triphosphate whose consumption is the biological currency for life process.)

The professor always finds a way to connect science with life's observation.

During the 1960s, Tso was studying at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was the president of its Chinese Students' Federation.

"Wisconsin had 700 Chinese students, the second largest after UC Berkeley. It was also one of the two centers - the other being Princeton - of the so-called 'Defend Diaoyutai Movement' in 1970 and 1971," Tso recalled.

Complicated historical background aside, the movement was an anti-Japanese campaign over the ownership of a group of disputed islets in the East China Sea.

Tso wrote the first report on the movement in US campuses, which was published in Ta Kung Pao in 1970.

He also witnessed the Civil Rights campaigns and Anti-War Movement in the US during the years between late 1960s and early 70s, though more as a recorder.

Armed with a camera, he photographed protestors at various campaign rallies. "You got to be radical when you were young. Otherwise, you wasted your time," he said, sounding nostalgic. "Life may have corners rounded, but my philosophy remains unchanged."

Those heady days came to an end when Tso came back to Hong Kong in 1972, after spending 11 years in the States. The same year, he started teaching at the Department of Biochemistry of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he still serves as an adjunct professor today.

"Teaching is about communication, not spoon-feeding," he said. "The job of a teacher should be the first section of a rocket - you push instead of pull."

Talking about rockets, Tso said he was behind a rocket technology exhibition in Hong Kong in 1993, the same year when China National Space Administration (CNSA) was formed in Beijing.

A few years earlier in 1986, he helped organize another exhibition in Hong Kong on nuclear technology. At the time, the construction on the Dayawan Nuclear Power Station had just started in the neighboring Guangdong province.

"The Chernobyl Disaster took place in April, 1986. There were lots of fear-mongering comparing Dayawan with the Chernobyl," said Tso. "The exhibition's aim was to show people how nuclear power could be harnessed to their benefits and to dissipate fear."

(Left): The book titled Numbers Are Cool or in Chinese 'Shu-Duo-Ku' written by Tso. (Right): A page in Numbers Are Cool. The numbers form a Chinese character 'Xu'.

Despite his contribution in teaching and in raising public awareness about techno-social issues, it was really his joining hands with the media that catapulted Tso to the centre of attention.

In 1980, Tso appeared on TV for the first time, as a host to a TVB science quiz competition for middle-school students. "That experience opened a door for me," he said. "To get hold of the interest of other people and to instill in them a sense of curiosity was one of the things I've enjoyed most."

The early 1990s saw the ascendance of the so-called "peripheral science" in Hong Kong, as more and more people came from the mainland who claimed to have preternatural power. Tso used to get daily phone calls from various media asking him to authenticate the claims.

"To me they were just a bunch of charlatans," said Tso, who would appear three times a day on TV to unravel what he saw as "complete lies".

"I once met this guy during the filming of a TV program who said that he could tell about the past. I challenged him with the number of times that I had divorced," said Tso, who had been happily married to his wife for the past 40 years. "All the time I was acting like a dandy."

The man fell into the trap.

"He could have gotten the correct answer if he had googled me," Tso said. "But believe it or not, this guy has become very rich now."

As feng-shui is a typical Hong Kong thing, it might not come as a complete surprise to Tso when he was asked by an old lady whether he could make a face-reading.

"I was mistaken for that face-reader I was attacking on TV," he said, rather wryly.

However, it was neither the first nor the last time that Tso had experienced the irony of life. While the media has been instrumental in getting his messages across to a wider public, it has also, to use Tso' own words, "fragmented me - maybe not in the right proportion." For one thing, "Dr Tso" seems to have become his sole identity.

"People shop. I would talk to a newspaper reporter about both politics and science, but at the end of the day it was only the science part that got mentioned in the article," said Tso whose official titles include councilor of the Sha Tin District Council and member of the Eleventh National People's Congress, the country's top legislative body.

If anything, Tso's trademark asymmetrical haircut, mischievous smile and childlike curiosity have only reinforced his image as an effervescent, iconoclastic maverick who does not fit readily into the role of a university professor. (In fact, the only person he quoted, a number of times, was Chairman Mao.)

"Do you know what I'm doing right now?" he asked, spreading out several books on the table. The title of the books reads in Chinese "Shu-Duo-Ku", or Numbers Are Cool. The author: Tso Wung-wai.

"It's my translation for Sudoku," Tso said, with a thinly-veiled sense of pride. Since first encountering an English book on number-placement puzzle three years ago, Tso had been trying to invent a new form of the game "with Chinese characteristics".

"I've also designed one for the Beijing Olympics," said Tso, sporting a necktie patterned with the Chinese character "Jin".

Tso has a whole genre of writing attributed to him. Collections of his essays - many were first seen in newspapers including Ta Kung Pao, Wen Wei Po and Ming Pao - have been published over the years under the title "Life Mechanics", "Budding" and "As it is".

"I haven't thought out an English term for them. They are neither prose nor scientific essays and yet have a little bit of both," he said.

In one article, he talked about the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the reference point every one needs in life. In another, he compared the formation of a snowflake with the progression of a man.

"The snowflake begins with a seed," he wrote. "The crystallization process takes place during its fall from heaven to earth. Everything could affect that process - temperature, humidity ... the whole environment."

"That reminds me how a person's life is the sum total of his previous experiences and bears the indelible stamps of those times."

(HK Edition 06/27/2008 page4)