Trinh Xuan Thuan

Who is Trinh Xuan Thuan?

Trịnh Xuân Thuận is a Vietnamese-American astrophysicist.

Thuận was born in Hanoi, Vietnam. He completed his B.S. at the California Institute of Technology, and his Ph.D. at Princeton University. He has taught astronomy at the University of Virginia, where he is a professor, since 1976, and is a Research Associate at the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris. He was a founding member of the International Society for Science and Religion.

Thuận was 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. Thuận's 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.