Tay Seow Huah (1932/1933 – September 1980) was a Singaporean senior civil servant who served at various times as Director of the

Special Branch Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security and Intelligence (information gathering), intelligence in Policing in the United Kingdom, British, Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth, ...

, Director of the Security and Intelligence Division, Permanent Secretary for Home Affairs and Permanent Secretary for Defence, prior to his retirement in 1976. He then taught history at the

University of Singapore The National University of Singapore (NUS) is a national public research university in Singapore. It was officially established in 1980 by the merging of the University of Singapore and Nanyang University. The university offers degree program ...

Career and awards

He was awarded the Meritorious Service Award in 1967, and the

Eisenhower Fellowships Eisenhower Fellowships (EF) is a private, non-profit organization created in 1953 by a group of American citizens to honor President Dwight D. Eisenhower for his contribution to humanity as a soldier, statesman, and world leader. The organization ...

in 1971. He was Acting Permanent Secretary of Home Affairs around 1971 and was involved in the

Laju incident The Laju incident, also known as the Laju ferry hijacking, occurred on 31 January 1974 in Singapore. Four armed men from the terrorist groups Japanese Red Army and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine attacked the Shell oil refinery com ...

Death

He died in September 1980, at the age of 47.

Legacy

In December 2000, the Tay Seow Huah Book Prize was set up by his children, Joanne Tay Siok Wan and Simon Tay Seong Chee, and a small group of relatives, friends and former colleagues, including President

S. R. Nathan Sellapan Ramanathan (; 3 July 1924 – 22 August 2016),. often known as S. R. Nathan, was a Singaporean statesman who served as the sixth president of Singapore between 1999 and 2011. He was the longest-serving president in the country's histor ...

. In 2024, his son released a memoir about him, ''Enigmas: Tay Seow Huah, My Father, Singapore’s Pioneer Spy Chief''.

References

External links

S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies Master of Science - Gold Medal and Prizes
1980 deaths Singaporean civil servants Permanent secretaries of Singapore Singaporean people of Chinese descent Terrorism in Singapore Year of birth uncertain {{Singapore-bio-stub