The French Academy (Académie Française) has recently announced that the University of Virginia’s Astronomy Professor Trinh Xuan Thuan was the laureate of the Grand Prix de la Francophonie for his outstanding contributions in maintaining and illustrating the French language.
The Grand Prix de la Francophonie is an initiative of the Canadian Government and has been awarded annually since 1986. Another Vietnamese, doctor Nguyen Khac Vien, won this award in 1992.
With this award, Professor Trinh Xuan Thuan will be presented EUR 30,000 (about VND 730 million).
Trinh Xuan Thuan was born on the 20th of August, 1948 in Hanoi. He graduated from the California Institute of Technology and the Princeton University before becoming a professor of astrophysics at the University of Virginia.
In 2007, the French Academy awarded its prestigious Grand Prix Moron to Thuan for “The Ways of Light.” He was also the recipient of UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize in 2009 for his work in popularizing science. He received the Kalinga chair award at the 99th Indian Science Congress at Bhubaneswar. In 2012, he was awarded the Prix Mondial Cino Del Duca from the Institut de France. This prize recognizes authors whose work, literary or scientific, constitutes a message of modern humanism.
His areas of interest are extragalactic astronomy and galaxy formation. His research has focused on the evolution of galaxies and the chemical composition of the universe, and on compact blue dwarf galaxies.
As an astrophysicist internationally recognized for his research in extragalactic astronomy, he is the author of more than 230 articles on the formation and evolution of galaxies, in particular dwarf galaxies, and on the synthesis of light elements in the Big bang. His articles are widely referred to in the world.
He is the author of many popular astronomy books which are written in French. They have all met the favor of a large audience and have been translated into some 20 languages, including English and Vietnamese, including “Dictionary of the Lover of the Sky and the Stars” (2009); “The Ways of Light” (2007); “Origins” (2003); “The Quantum and the Lotus” (2001); “Chaos and Harmony” (2001); “Birth of the Universe” (1993); “An Astrophysicist” (1992), and “The Secret Melody” (1995).
Despite spending most of his life abroad, he still turns his heart to and contributes to his homeland. Thuan says he returns to Vietnam to inspire young people interested in scientific research to put Vietnam’s science on a par with the rest of the world.
