Internationally famous Vietnamese
scientists
Dam Thanh
Son, Nguyen Trong Hien and Luu Le Hang are scientists who have made great
contributions to world science and human civilization.
From left: Dam
Thanh Son, Luu Le Hang and Nguyen Trong Hien.
I’m very proud to attend all 10 Meet
Vietnam events, stretching over two decades. (Since 1993 the Rencontres du
Vietnam (Meet Vietnam) science and education foundation has organised
numerous international conferences aimed at helping young scientists establish
contacts with international colleagues. It has also organized thematic
scientific schools throughout the country with the goal of improving the
tertiary education system. The architect of the foundation is physicist Jean
Tran Thanh Van.)
The first Meet Vietnam took place at
the guesthouse of the Ministry of Defence in
In 1993,
However, hundreds of physicists in
the
Dr. Dam Thanh Son and Dr. Nguyen
Trong Hien were present at the first meeting. Son was 24 years old at that
time while Hien was 30. Their presentations at the meeting were their
doctoral theses that they were about to defend. Son returned home from the
Moscow Institute for Nuclear Research to introduce a new vision for the
structure of the atomic nuclei.
Hien worked for NASA and he returned
home from
The second Meet Vietnam took place at
Reunification Hall in
Son and Hien did not miss it. And the
meeting had a new face: Ms. Luu Le Hang (ie Jane Luu). She was born in 1963
in
The report by Jane Luu revealed that
she and David Jewitt had discovered dozens of asteroids in the Kuiper Belt,
far beyond
Two decades later
...
Since then Son, Hien and I have
regularly attended Meet Vietnam. Hien and I went to the
In August 2013, Luu Le Hang also received
the invitation of Prof. Van to attend the opening of the International Centre
for Interdisciplinary Science and Education in Binh Dinh but unfortunately
she could not return due to personal reasons.
During the past two decades, I’ve
been keeping track of these scientists’ scientific success.
On April 29, 2014 Dam Thanh Son was
elected by the National Academy of Sciences/NAS as an academician, after a
thorough evaluation from the leading physicists. NAS was established in 1863
and currently has 2,200 academicians. At least 200 NAS academicians are Nobel
Prize winners.
In early 2005, P.K. Kovtun, Dam Thanh
Son and A.O. Starinets published a work on a model of a liquid black hole in
10-dimensional space. In Physical Review, the authors predicted that the
physical condition existed in the first 10 microseconds of the universe was a
nearly ideal fluid, later called constant KSS.
Theoretical predictions of the KSS
group were checked and certified as correct by the largest experimental
centers in the
In 2014, Hien also achieved great
success. The "age" of the universe is currently 13.798 billion
years. One theory is that our universe was born from the Big Bang.
Another theory, which is the Inflation Theory. According to this theory, the
universe erupted from nothing, or more precisely, from a singularity which is
smaller than an atomic nucleus, exploded with a velocity greater than the
speed of light, and in a very short moment, about one of billion billion
billion seconds ...! Thus, the universe is not eternal, but it is
impermanent.
Group BICFP2 (Background Imaging of
Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) of the Astronomy Center of Harvard -
Smithsonian with Hien as a member wanted to find evidence for the theory of
inflation, through the observance of cosmic microwave background radiation at
the South Pole.
I also want to mention the brilliant
success of Jane Luu.
In 2012 the Kavli astrophysics prize
award was given to Dr. Jane Luu, David Jewitt and Michael Brown for discover
the Kuiper Belt. This award is considered the Nobel prize of astronomy, with
$1 million in cash.
The same year, David Jewitt and Jane
Luu also won the Shaw Award, with $1 million.
Mankind’s understanding about the
solar system has improved considerably over the last dozen of years. The
Vietnamese scientist, with her outstanding inventions, has helped enrich
knowledge of mankind in the last several centuries about the solar system and
changed people’s perceptions about the infinite universe where they live.
Ten years ago, the solar system was
described as a system of planets, where the Sun is at the center, surrounded
by nine celestial bodies that bear the sun’s attraction. These include eight
major planets and one “subordinate” planet, located in three groups.
The first group included four planets
– Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars – the small planets, solid, and composed
primarily of rocks and metals.
The second group included four large
planets. Two largest, Jupiter and Saturn, are composed of helium and
hydrogen, while the main components of the other smaller two, Uranus and
Neptune are ice (water, ammonia and methane). They have very large sizes but have
small density.
The third group was believed to
comprise Pluto only.
However, the understanding about the
solar system could not explain the phenomena and information collected by
modern equipment used in astronomy.
Jane Luu, together with her colleague
David Jewitt, a professor of astronomy in the Earth, Planetary, and Space
Science Department of UCLA, then decided to conduct scientific research work
in an innovative and bold way – surveying slow-moving objects outside the
solar system.
They successfully proved the
existence of a belt which comprises numerous objects in the region of the
solar system beyond the planets, extending from the orbit of
In 1992, after five years of working
hard, Jewitt and Luu found a meteorite and named it 1992 QB1 which had the
diameter of 280 kilometers, or 1/8th of Pluto.
This paved the way for dozens of
discoveries by the research team and hundreds of other discoveries by the
astronomy community around the world.
The discoveries all showed that there
exist thousands of objects, from big to small, from comets to interplanetary
dust. Of these, five objects are bigger than others, including Ceres, Haumea,
Makemake, Eris and Pluto.
These are called the dwarf planets
because of their slight weight. The group of dwarf planets is the third group
of the solar system, which in the past was believed to consist of Pluto only.
For her great achievements, the
scientist has received many prestigious awards. In 1991, a short time after
receiving her doctorate, she received the Annie J. Cannon Award from the US
Astronomical Union.
And in recognition of her services of
discovering more than 30 new small planets, one of the planets has been named
after her, Asteroid 5430 Luu.
The three young physicists of the
first Meet Vietnam - Dam Thanh Son, Nguyen Trong Hien and Luu Le Hang - have
brought fame to Meet Vietnam and their home country.
Ham Chau (Lao Dong)
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Thứ Bảy, 2 tháng 5, 2015
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