THE family of a senior Scottish academic was yesterday travelling to Hong Kong after he was killed in a road accident outside his home in the islands, which was witnessed by his teenage daughter.

Professor Julian Critchley, 50, died less than two hours after he was struck by a car as he rushed across a pedestrian crossing in torrential rain with his daughter Julia, 18, and her friend, early last Friday morning, in Tai Chung Kiu Road, near his home.

The driver of the car, a 27-year-old off-duty fire officer, joined the academic's daughter in a frantic battle to revive him as paramedics dashed to the scene.

He was taken to the Prince of Wales hospital, where he was treated for serious head injuries, but was pronounced dead at around 3am on Friday.

Local police said the car driver had passed a breathalyser test with a zero reading.

The academic, whose family lives in Loanhead, Midlothian, had worked at the Chinese University since 1989, and was head of the clinical pharmacology division, where he was a highly-regarded obesity and metabolic specialist.

Professor Critchley's wife Chris, a consultant lecturer in endocrinology and diabetes at Edinburgh University, was yesterday flying to Hong Kong with the couple's two sons, Bernard, 22, and Alexander, 13.

His family remained in Scotland to allow the couple's three children to continue their studies, but often travelled to Hong Kong to visit their father.

Julia, a medical student at Edinburgh University, had arrived on the island only days before the accident.

Neither she nor her friend were injured in the crash, which

happened at a busy junction.

Paying tribute to the Scots academic, Professor Sydney Chung Sheung-chee, dean of the faculty of medicine at the Chinese University, said: ''We all feel very sad. Professor Critchley was alarmed by an increase of diabetic patients in Hong Kong, so he devoted a lot of effort and time to the study of diabetes among Chinese people.

''His death is a big loss, not only to the university and the hospital, but also the medical field and the community.''

Professor Critchley was a highly-regarded figure within the special administrative region, where he acted as an adviser to police and the judiciary and was understood to have been instrumental in setting up the first drug and poisons information bureau.