LookAtVietnam – Professor of physics Do Dinh Chieu is a prestigious scientist and a lecturer at Montpellier University in France. Over the past 30 years he has returned to Vietnam frequently.

Prof. Do Dinh Chieu addresses the 33rd National Theoretical Physics Conference held in Da Nang in August 2008.

Having a passionate love for the homeland he always tries to bequeath the knowledge he has accumulated to young Vietnamese generations. He said: “Being an overseas Vietnamese I feel indebted to the homeland, if not devoted to it”.

Professor Do Dinh Chieu was born into a Confucian family in Ha Tay Province (present-day Hanoi). At young age he met many difficulties because the country was not independent. With great efforts in his study, at 17 he graduated from high school and was granted a scholarship to study in France.

With assistance from three well-known French professors, including Louis Neel (Nobel Prize winner in physics in 1970), Pierre Gilles de Gennes (Nobel Prize winner in physics in 1991) and Felix Bertaut, in 1972, Chieu successfully defended a doctoral thesis about magnetic material and was invited to work at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and later, the French Nuclear Centre.

Since then he has been closely connected with the lecture halls of many renowned universities that have the most advanced science and technology in the world. Achieving many successes, he nurtured a desire to return to his homeland.

Since the last years of the 1970s when Vietnam was in a difficult period, Do Dinh Chieu has contributed actively to Vietnamese science. Still today people often talk about the fact that he brought a projector and many precious French books and documents back to Vietnam and presented them to the Vietnam Institute of Physics. These were invaluable assets for the country’s physics advancement.

In the initial years he stayed in Vietnam for 1-2 months per year. Over the past ten years he has spent half a year at a time in Vietnam. He is paid by the French Government to lecture at Vietnamese universities, such as Hanoi University of Technology and Vietnam National University in Hanoi, and work with the Ministry of Education and Training, the Institute of Physics, Ho Chi Minh City Institute of Science, etc.

His return to Vietnam is more significant now that Vietnam is preparing to build a nuclear power plant. He organizes more seminars and talks on physics. Do Dinh Chieu is not only excellent in researching and teaching nuclear physics but also knowledgeable about national cultural tradition.

The image of Prof. Chieu wearing a long dress and a turban – the traditional attire of Vietnamese men in the past, at the conferences and discussions has become familiar to many people. Particularly, in the sacred atmosphere of the UN Vesak Day which was held in Vietnam, the image of Prof. Chieu in the national traditional attire delivering a speech on the similarity between physics and Buddhism made a strong impression on the participants.

Prof. Chieu devotes much energy and thought to the physics of his homeland without paying attention to bonuses. He even reserves a part of his salary paid by the French Government to grant to some universities and poor students who have a thirst for learning. He realized that the training of young generations is an urgent necessity.

He said: “ Vietnam has a good scientific foundation, but as the country still faces difficulties young people do not have sufficient technical and material conditions to study. I always have an ambition that one day the physical knowledge that scientists have taught young Vietnamese people will be successfully applied, helping them follow their forefathers to enable the Vietnamese sciences to keep pace with the world”.

VietNamNet/VNP