HONG KONG -- Li Ka-shing may have dropped out of school at age 12, but that lack of educational achievement did not stop Hong Kong's richest man from playing a role in the success of one of the winners of the Nobel Prize for Medicine announced this week. Michael Houghton, one of three scientists awarded on Monday for research that identified the virus that causes hepatitis C, holds a virology professorship endowed by Li at Canada's University of Alberta and serves as director of the school's Li Ka Shing Applied Virology Institute.