VietNamNet Bridge - On January 10, 2017, for the first time in Vietnam’s physics history, an article about nuclear physics by Vietnamese authors was published in an international scientific journal.

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Mr Nguyen Quang Hung

The article titled “Simultaneous microscopic description of nuclear level densities and radiative strength functions” was published in Physical Review Letters 118, 022502 (2017). It was the work of a team of Vietnamese scientists: Nguyen Quang Hung from Duy Tan University, Da Nang City, Vietnam, Nguyen Dinh Dang from RIKEN, Wako, Japan and Le Thi Quynh Huong from Khanh Hoa University, Nha Trang City, Vietnam.

According to Hung, in order to appear in Physical Review Letters, research must satisfy one of three criteria. 

First, the scientists have to open up a new research field or map out new research models in certain fields, thus having important effects on research in other fields. Second, they have to create the foundation to help settle existing problems. Third, they have to show new techniques or new methodologies that play important roles in physics research in the future.

As for Hung, the article is the result of his 10-year research period, which began when he became a PhD fellow in July 2006 at RIKEN, Japan, and later in Vietnam in September 2010. 

On January 10, 2017, for the first time in Vietnam’s physics history, an article about nuclear physics by Vietnamese authors was published in an international scientific journal.
Hung spent four years working in Long An province, while his family members lived in HCMC during that time. It took him four hours a day at least to travel from home to the university.

“During those years, I had to stay up through the night and wake up at 6 am,” he said.

Nguyen Dinh Dang said science and arts are just like love. “Once passionate, one will not weigh and calculate too much,” he said.

Dang said one should not mistake nuclear physics and nuclear power.  “Nuclear physics is a basic science that helps people understand the secrets of nature, the principles of the universe and all things including humans,” he said.

About the prospect of utilizing nucleus in general and nuclear power in Vietnam in the future, Dang said that after the serious catastrophes occurring with some nuclear power plants, especially Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011, the world tends to pay higher attention to clean energy development, such as solar, wind and biofuel.

Hung said while the best known nuclear physics research centers in the world are in US, Europe, Australia, Canada and Japan, the team studying nuclear physics in Vietnam is quite powerful, with researchers from the Atomic Energy Commission of Vietnam, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, and two National Universities in Hanoi and HCM City.


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