Vietnam’s National Day celebrated far and wide

Vietnamese embassies worldwide hosted receptions on September 2 to mark the country’s 65 th National Day.

In Phnom Penh , the event saw the presence of Chairman of the Cambodian National Assembly Heng Samrin and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Hor Nam Hong.

Addressing the reception, Ambassador Ngo Anh Dung spoke of the historical significance of September 2, 1945 – the day President Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence to give the birth to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, now the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

He recalled enormous achievements the Vietnamese Party, State and people have made in the past 65 years during which they fought for national liberation and reunification together with building and developing the country.

On behalf of the Cambodian Royal Government, Deputy Prime Minister Hor Nam Hong spoke highly of the time-honoured friendship and the growing cooperation between the two countries. He expressed his pleasure to see a surge in Vietnam ’s investment in Cambodia and the two countries’ trade over the past years.

The same day, the Vietnamese embassy’s staff laid a wreath at the monument dedicated to Vietnamese volunteer soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the Cambodian people’s freedom.

In Jakarta , the Vietnamese embassy and the Vietnamese Permanent Delegation to ASEAN co-hosted a function marking both Vietnam ’s 65 th National Day and the 55 th anniversary of Vietnam-Indonesia diplomatic ties.

Ambassador Nguyen Huu Dung, in his opening speech, laid stress on Vietnam ’s image and position and its deeper integration into the region and the world at large.

This year, Vietnam is working hard in the role of ASEAN Chair and has made important contributions to the group’s development to realise the building of the ASEAN Community in 2015, the ambassador said.

He affirmed that Vietnam , as a UN member, has enforced its international commitments and has enthusiastically taken part in concerted efforts to deal with global issues, such as climate change and food and energy security.

Speaking at the event, Indonesian Deputy Foreign Minister Triyono Wibowo warmly congratulated Vietnam on its 65 th National Day and underlined developments and the vast benefits of multi-dimensional cooperation between the two countries over the past 55 years.

In anticipation of the event, Vietnamese representative agencies in Indonesia organised an exhibition of photo and paintings to promote the beauty of Vietnam ’s land and people and feature a dynamic and active Vietnam in ASEAN.

The same day, activities to mark National Day were held in several European countries.

In London , the Vietnamese embassy in the UK and the North Ireland held a reception attended by representatives of Buckingham palace, parliament, ministries, UK organisations, the UK-Vietnam Society, the Overseas Vietnamese Association, the Business Society, Vietnamese representative agencies and Vietnamese expatriates in London .

The event in Moscow saw the presence of Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov, representatives of Russian and Moscow governments, President of the Russia-Vietnam Friendship Association Vladimir Buiyanov, ambassadors of countries of the former Soviet Union and ASEAN member countries, and representatives of international organisations.

In Paris , Vietnam ’s National Day was celebrated with an event attended by 600 guests, including President of the French-Vietnamese Friendship Group to the House of Representatives Michel Voisin.

National Day celebrations were also held in Algeria , Argentina , Italy , South Africa , Mexico , Malaysia and other countries, and Guangzhou , China .

At these functions, the Vietnamese ambassadors all emphasised that this year’s National Day is being marked at a time when the entire country is looking forward to the 1,000 th anniversary of the capital city of Hanoi , where the Thang Long Royal Citadel has been recognised by the UNESCO as a world cultural heritage site.

The ambassadors also took this occasion to reiterate Vietnam ’s consistent foreign policy of openness and friendliness towards all countries around the world.

They thanked international friends for their valuable assistance to Vietnam in its past struggle for national liberation and current construction and expressed their belief that Vietnam ’s relationship with other countries will be elevated to a new height in the future./.

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Vietnam National Day celebrated abroad

Vietnamese embassies and organisations abroad as well as overseas Vietnamese communities have held many activities to mark the 65 th National Day of Vietnam (Sept. 2).

Vietnamese Ambassador to Cuba Vu Chi Cong granted an interview to the Cuban daily Trabajadores (Workers), highlighting Vietnam ’s achievements in national renewal.

The country has emerged as the world’s second largest rice exporter with an export volume of about 5-6 million tonnes a year. It achieved a GDP growth rate of 5.3 percent in 2009 despite the global economic crisis and expects to grow by 6.5 percent this year. The poverty rate reduced from 58 percent in the 1990s to 12 percent at present.

The Vietnamese diplomat expressed thanks to assistance from people all over the world, including the Cuban people, to Vietnam during the national construction and defence.

The Federation of Vietnamese People in Laos held football and petanque tournaments to celebrate Vietnam ’s National Day.

In Australia , the municipal council of Kiama city, New South Wales , Australia , and the Vietnamese Consulate General in Sydney held a ceremony on Aug. 28 to raise the national flags of Vietnam and Australia at the city’s town hall to mark the 65 th National Day of Vietnam.

Addressing the ceremony, Kiama Vice Mayor Ban Van Der Wikngaart affirmed that Kiama municipal council’s commitment to the cooperation with Vietnam, saying the agreement between Kiama and its sister city of Hoi An in central Vietnam was a important premise to implement cooperation projects and create opportunities to boost exchanges in education, tourism, trade and culture between the two tourist cities.

For his part, Vietnamese consul general to Sydney Vu Hong Nam stated that the annual flag-raising ceremony on Vietnam ’s National Day is a vivid symbol of the friendship between Vietnam and Australia from municipal to governmental levels.

Earlier, on Aug. 26, the Vietnamese Embassy in Canada held a ceremony to mark the country’s 65 th National Day with the participation of Canadian governmental and parliamentary officials as well as representatives from businesses and organisations of Vietnam and Canada./.

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The journey of prize-winning mathematician

At the age of 15, Ngo Bao Chau was admitted into a mathematics-specializing class of the Vietnam National University High School, formerly known as A0-class.

After Vietnamese mathematician Ngo Bao Chau won the world’s top mathematics prize, the Fields Medal, last Thursday, much has been said about how a child of the Vietnam war could manage to make his journey from war-torn Hanoi to the pages of Time magazine.

38-year-old Chau currently works at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and will join the mathematics faculty at the University of Chicago on September 1.

He is holding both Vietnamese and French citizenship. Chau is best known for proving the fundamental lemma proposed by Robert Langlands and Diana Shelstad, an achievement which was selected by Time as one of the Top Ten Scientific Discoveries of 2009.

For his works, Chau was awarded the 2004 Clay Research Award. He also became the youngest professor in Vietnam in 2005. This year he received the Fields Medal.

Chau is the only son to an intellectual family in Hanoi, Vietnam. His father, professor Ngo Huy Can, is a full professor in Physics at the Vietnam National Institute of Mechanics. His mother, Tran Luu Van Hien, is an associate professor-doctor in a hospital in Hanoi.

At the age of 15, he was admitted into a mathematics-specializing class of the Vietnam National University High School, formerly known as A0-class. In grade 11 and 12, Chau participated respectively in the 29th and 30th International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) and became the first Vietnamese student to win two IMO gold medals, of which the first one was won with a perfect score.

After high school, Chau prepared to study in Budapest but in the aftermath of the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, the new Hungarian government stopped providing scholarships to students from Vietnam.

He was then offered a scholarship by the French government for undergraduate study at the Paris VI University but he chose to study in the prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure. He obtained a PhD in 1997 from the Universite Paris-Sud under the supervision of Gérard Laumon.

He became member of CNRS at the Paris 13 University, where he stayed from 1998 to 2005. There, he defended his habilitation degree in 2003. He became Professor at Paris-Sud 11 University in 2005.

In 2005 Chau received the title of professor in Vietnam and thus became the youngest professor ever in Vietnam at the age of 33. Currently, Chau is working at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey and holding a position at the Hanoi Institute of Mathematics. He has accepted a professorship at the University of Chicago.

In 2004 Chau and Laumon were awarded the Clay Research Award for their achievement in solving the fundamental lemma proposed by Robert Langlands for the case of unitary groups.

Chau eventually succeeded in formulating the proof for the general case of Langlands's lemma in 2008, a result that was praised by the number theorist Peter Sarnak: "It's as if people were working on the far side of the river waiting for someone to throw this bridge across. And now all of sudden everyone's work on the other side of the river has been proven."

Chau's success was selected by Time as one of the Top Ten Scientific Discoveries of 2009. On August 19, 2010, Chau was awarded the 2010 Fields Medal at the ICM 2010 in Hyderabad, India, for his proof of the general case of the fundamental lemma through the introduction of new algebraic geometry methods.

Below is what Time Magazine wrote about Chau:

In 1979 the Canadian-American mathematician Robert Langlands developed an ambitious and revolutionary theory that connected two branches of mathematics called number theory and group theory.

In a dazzling set of conjectures and insights, the theory captured deep symmetries associated with equations that involve whole numbers, laying out what is now known as the Langlands program.

Langlands knew that the task of proving the assumptions that underlie his theory would be the work of generations. But he was convinced that one stepping stone that needed confirmation — dubbed the "fundamental lemma" — would be reasonably straightforward.

He, his collaborators and his students were able to prove special cases of this fundamental theorem. But proving the general case proved more difficult than Langlands anticipated — so difficult, in fact, that it took 30 years to finally achieve.

Over the past few years, Ngo Bao Chau, a Vietnamese mathematician working at Université Paris-Sud and the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, formulated an ingenious proof of the fundamental lemma.

When it was checked this year and confirmed to be correct, mathematicians around the globe breathed a sigh of relief. Mathematicians' work in this area in the last three decades was predicated on the principle that the fundamental lemma was indeed accurate and would one day be proved.

"It's as if people were working on the far side of the river waiting for someone to throw this bridge across," says Peter Sarnak, a number theorist at IAS. "And now all of sudden everyone's work on the other side of the river has been proven."

Right after getting news about the Fields Medal award to Professor Ngo Bao Chau, President Nguyen Minh Triet and Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung sent letters of congratulation.

The Prime Minister called the award a big honor for the professor and his family, a matter of pride for the Vietnamese nation, and a strong encouragement for young Vietnamese scientists.

“I strongly believe that with iron wills and with the support of seniors and masters, including you, our nation’s young scientists will have more and more achievements that redound to the glory of the Vietnamese nation,” Dung’s letter reads.

President Triet said he highly appreciated Chau’s achievements and valuable contribution to mathematics, a feat that has brought pride and big honor to Vietnam.

Triet emphasized that Chau’s award is also a triumph for Vietnam’s mathematics, and expressed hope that Chau will continue making contribution to Vietnam’s and the world’s mathematics.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Francois Fillon have also expressed their admiration to Ngo Bao Chau and Cedric Villani, the medal winners who have ties to France.

International press agencies have covered the Fields Awards actively. Many paid special attention to Chau’s achievements. 

The next story is about how the success of Ngo Bao Chau makes people wonder about the situation of Vietnamese maths sector. To be continued...

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