Tribute to Professor Nguyên Van Hiêu
Professor Nguyên Van Hiêu was one of the most emblematic figures in the development of physics and science and technology in his country.
President of the Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology for many years, co-founder of the Vietnamese aerospace program, he had received many national and international awards including the Lenin Prize in 1986. He was responsible for the discovery of a new law in high-energy nuclear physics, concerning the scale invariance of multiple production cross sections.
Path of a great physicist
Born on July 21, 1938 in Hanoi, Nguyên Van Hiêu graduated in physics from the École Normale Supérieure of Hanoi in 1956, where he then taught physics from 1956 to 1960. From 1960 to 1969, he worked in the USSR.
He was a researcher at the Doubna Nuclear Research Center in the field of neutrino physics and he obtained a doctorate in physics in 1963 with his thesis entitled "Asymptomatic relations of scattering amplitudes in local, quantum and relativistic field theory".
He was appointed assistant at the Lomonosov University of Moscow in 1964, then professor in 1968. He became a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in 1982, before returning to Vietnam to hold high political and scientific positions.
Cooperations between Vietnam and ENS Paris-Saclay
ENS Paris-Saclay has always maintained a sustained cooperation with Vietnam, both in the form of scientific collaborations and student mobilities. Vietnam is the 3rd most represented nationality at the School.
Its participation in the consortium of French institutions of the University of Science and Technology of Hanoi (USTH) from its inception until 2021 is evidence of this, particularly through the involvement of its teachers in two masters programs: Advanced Materials Science and Nanotechnology and Energy and Valorization; and in a research working group on photonics in the Materials and Nanotechnology Department.
Other cooperations have been formally established in recent years, notably with the Polytechnic Institute of Hà Nôi University of Science and Technology (HUST).
ENS Paris-Saclay sends its most sincere condolences to his family, friends and colleagues.