VIETNAM: Top award for professor

World renowned astrophysicist, Vietnamese-American Professor Trinh Xuan Thuan has been awarded the Unesco Kalinga prize for his contribution to science. The award was presented at the World Scientific Forum held this month in Hungary.

The Kalinga Prize is awarded every year during events celebrating World Science Day. The award, created in 1952 after a donation from Biju Patnaik, Founding President of the Kalinga Foundation Trust in India, recognises those who have made an outstanding contribution to bringing science to the masses in many fields, including science, academia, journalism, and literature.

Trinh was born in Hanoi and moved to Saigon in 1954 when Vietnam was divided in half at the 17th parallel. After finishing primary school he attended a French secondary school then went overseas to undertake tertiary studies. He completed a bachelor of physics at the California Institute of Technology and a PhD in Astrophysics at Princeton.

He has been professor of astronomy at the University of Virginia since 1976 and is internationally recognised for his research in extragalactic astronomy and for discovering the youngest known galaxy in the world. He has written more than 200 articles on the formation and evolution of galaxies.

As winner of the award, Professor Trinh receives £10,000 (US$16,700) the Unesco Albert Einstein Silver Medal and the Ruchi Ram Sahni Chair, a position introduced by India in 1951 to mark the 50th anniversary of the award.

While most winners would not exactly be household names, past recipients include American anthropologist Margaret Mead, British science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke, and Canadian scientist, author and documentary maker David Suzuki.