Professor Phan Huy Le honoured in France

The honouring ceremony took place at France Embassy on March 20th.

Professor Phan Huy Le, born in 1934 in the central province of Ha Tinh, was President of the Vietnam Association of Historical Science from 1990 to 2015.  He was elected a foreign correspondent member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Bells-Letres in 2011. The French School of the Far East (École française d'Extrême-Orient - EFEO), also gave an Honourary Doctorate degree the professor.

In November 2011, the professor discovered by chance the only manuscript of the Vietnamese epic poem Luc Van Tien (The Story of Luc Van Tien) along with illustrations during a visit to the library of the Institute of France. It had been in storage for the past 120 years and almost no one had paid attention to the document’s existence or its value.

Luc Van Tien was penned by the blind poet, Nguyen Dinh Chieu, in the Nom script (Sinitic characters peculiar to Vietnam) in the 19th Century./.