Top 3 Famous Female Mathematics Professors in Vietnam

Hoàng Xuân Sính (born September 5, 1933) is a Vietnamese politician, educator, mathematician, professor, and People’s Teacher. She was the first female mathematics professor in Vietnam.

She hails from Cót village, Từ Liêm, Hanoi (now part of Yên Hòa ward, Cầu Giấy district). In 1951, after graduating from Chu Văn An High School (Hanoi), where she studied English and French, she was invited by her uncle to continue her studies in France, where she completed both her high school and university education in mathematics. She graduated from the University of Toulouse (France) and continued her studies to pass the agrégation exam (a competitive civil service examination for education professionals in France). Afterward, she returned to Vietnam to teach at Hanoi University of Education.

She became a research student under the mentorship of the renowned French mathematician Alexander Grothendieck. Her doctoral thesis, titled “Gr-Categories,” was defended at Paris 7 University in 1975. Prior to defending her thesis in Paris, she presented her research at the 1971 Vietnamese Mathematical Conference in Hanoi and at the 1974 International Congress of Mathematicians in Vancouver (Canada).

After earning her Ph.D., she returned to Vietnam, where she began teaching mathematics and authoring university and high school textbooks. She was the head of the Algebra department and the Math-Computer Science faculty at Hanoi University of Education. She was also one of the founders of Thăng Long University, Vietnam’s first private university, founded on December 15, 1988, and currently serves as the Chairperson of its Board of Trustees. She is a member of the Kovalevskaya Science Prize selection committee in Vietnam. She has been entrusted multiple times with leading Vietnamese student delegations to the International Mathematics Olympiad. Additionally, she served as Vice Chair of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front during its 6th Congress (2004), as a member of the National Policy Council for Science and Technology, and as a member of the National Education Council, among other roles.

In 1996, she was awarded the title of People’s Teacher by the Vietnamese government. In 2003, she was presented with the “Order of Academic Palms” by the French government in recognition of her significant contributions to scientific research and cooperation between France and Vietnam.

Lê Thị Thanh Nhàn (born March 23, 1970) is the Director of the Department of Personnel and Organization at the Ministry of Education and Training and the former Rector of the University of Science at Thai Nguyen University. She is the second female mathematics professor in Vietnam. Her primary research focuses on Commutative Algebra and Algebraic Geometry.

Born in Thừa Thiên Huế and raised in Thai Nguyen, Lê Thị Thanh Nhàn was the second child in a family of five. Her mother was a teacher, and her father, a soldier, passed away when she was young. Initially aspiring to become a teacher, she studied mathematics at Vietnam's Bắc University in Thai Nguyen from 1986 to 1990, graduating with a degree in mathematics and later becoming a faculty member there. She earned her Master's degree in 1995 and her Ph.D. in Mathematics from the Hanoi Institute of Mathematics in 2001.

In 2005, she was promoted to Associate Professor, becoming the youngest female mathematician in Vietnam to achieve this rank. She was also a young member of the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Italy from 2002 to 2007 and a full member from 2009 to 2014. In 2009, she was appointed as the Vice Rector of the University of Science at Thai Nguyen University.

In 2011, she was one of two recipients of the Kovalevskaya Prize, an annual award honoring women in scientific fields in Vietnam. The award, named after the Russian mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya, was established in 1985 by mathematician Neal Koblitz and his wife Ann Hibner Koblitz, based on proceeds from Ann's biography of Kovalevskaya. In 2015, she was promoted to the rank of Professor, becoming the second female mathematics professor in Vietnam after Professor Hoàng Xuân Sính. From May 2015 to 2020, she served as the Secretary of the Party Committee at the University of Science, Thai Nguyen University, and from June 2016 to 2021, as the Rector of the University. In 2019, she was appointed Director of the Personnel and Organization Department at the Ministry of Education and Training.

Tạ Thị Hoài An, born on October 24, 1972, in Nam Đàn, Nghệ An, is the third woman to achieve the title of Mathematics Professor in Vietnam in nearly 70 years. She graduated from university in 1993, earned her Master's degree in 1997, and completed her Ph.D. in 2001 at Vinh University. She obtained her Doctor of Science degree in Mathematics in 2015 from the University of Clermont-Ferrand 2 Blaise Pascal, France.

From 1995 to 2001, Tạ Thị Hoài An worked as a lecturer at Vinh University. From September 2001 to August 2004, she pursued postdoctoral studies at the Institute of Mathematics, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.

After returning to Vinh University in 2004, she worked there until March 2013, then became a researcher at the Institute of Mathematics, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology. Since April 2014, she has served as a senior researcher at the same institute.

In 2009, she was appointed Associate Professor. Her research interests include problems related to the unique determination of functions, Nevanlinna theory and its applications, degeneracy of analytic mappings, and Diophantine approximation problems. To date, she has published 33 scientific papers in prestigious international journals.