VietAlpha A research lab for Vietnam's mathematical record

Mathematics research in Vietnam

Mathematics research in Vietnam is carried out at two national institutes in Hanoi, the Institute of Mathematics of the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology and the Vietnam Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics, and at mathematics faculties across the universities. Three further bodies cut across them: a UNESCO centre, a joint laboratory with the French CNRS, and a national mathematics programme.

VietAlpha compiled this while working on a different part of the subject, the surviving written record of Vietnamese mathematics. We wanted a map like this one and could not find it.

How mathematics research in Vietnam is organised.

The useful distinction is between the two national institutes, because they are different kinds of thing and are often confused.

The Institute of Mathematics is a permanent research institute inside the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology. It maintains five research departments of its own and trains at master's and doctoral level,3 which means a mathematician can be appointed there and stay. The staff list and the departmental structure are the visible signs of that arrangement.

VIASM convenes. Its own account of itself is that "the main activity of the Institute is organizing research groups to conduct research programs and projects of high quality", and it brings mathematicians in through fellowships and short programmes.2 The two models are complements.

Three further bodies cut across both. ICRTM, a Category 2 centre under UNESCO's auspices, is a unit of the Institute of Mathematics and shares its address.5 Research with France runs through the IRL France-Vietnam, a laboratory the CNRS operates jointly with VAST and VIASM from premises at both institutes.20 The Vietnam Mathematical Society is Vietnam's adhering organisation to the International Mathematical Union, the body through which a country takes part in the IMU.8

Support arrives from two directions. One is a national programme for mathematics, now in its second phase. The other is NAFOSTED, which awards competitive grants for basic research and assesses mathematics through a council of its own.

Institutes, centres, and the learned society.

The order below is arbitrary. A ranking would assert something we have no standing to assert.

  • Institute of Mathematics

    Viện Toán học · VAST · 18 Hoàng Quốc Việt, Cầu Giấy, Hà Nội

    Created by Decision 25/CP of 5 February 1969, signed by Prime Minister Phạm Văn Đồng, and in operation from 1970, when Lê Văn Thiêm was put in charge of it. He was appointed director in 1975 and Hoàng Tụy followed in 1980.3 Its five departments cover algebra and number theory, analysis and differential equations, geometry and topology, discrete mathematics with probability and statistics, and optimisation with scientific computing. It publishes Acta Mathematica Vietnamica, which began in 1964 under an earlier title and took its present one in 1976; Lê Văn Thiêm was its first editor-in-chief, from 1964 to 1983.4

  • Vietnam Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics

    VIASM · Viện Nghiên cứu cao cấp về Toán · 157 Chùa Láng, Đống Đa, Hà Nội

    Creating VIASM was the central object of the national mathematics programme, and it was established by Decision 2342/QĐ-TTg of 23 December 2010, opening on 1 June 2011.1 Ngô Bảo Châu has been its Scientific Director since March 2011 and Lê Minh Hà its Managing Director since February 2018. It organises research groups, offers postdoctoral fellowships every year, and runs summer schools and training courses for mathematics teachers. Its scope covers pure and applied mathematics and applications in physics, computer science, earth science, life sciences and economics.2

  • International Centre for Research and Postgraduate Training in Mathematics

    ICRTM · under the auspices of UNESCO · inside the Institute of Mathematics

    A Category 2 centre: a Vietnamese national body operating under UNESCO's auspices. Vietnam and UNESCO signed the agreement on 24 August 2017; VAST established the centre by Decision 307/QĐ-VHL on 5 March 2018; the Prime Minister approved the agreement by Decision 701/QĐ-TTg on 12 May 2021.5 It opened to the public alongside the International Centre for Physics in October 2021.21 In mid-April 2026 the UNESCO Executive Board extended its Category 2 status by eight years, to 2034.7 Its work is postgraduate training and research at international level.

  • IRL France-Vietnam in Mathematics and its Applications

    IRL FVMA · CNRS, VAST and VIASM · Hà Nội

    Created on 1 January 2023 by the CNRS together with VAST and VIASM.6 The laboratory sits under the joint responsibility of the three, which supply its staff and resources, and it works from premises at both Vietnamese institutes.20 Its research covers partial differential equations, complex analysis, algebraic topology, singularity theory, commutative algebra, discrete mathematics and probability theory, and it supports research visits in both directions, master's programmes, conferences and CIMPA schools. Ngô Bảo Châu directed it from its creation; Phan Thị Hà Dương took over at a ceremony held at VAST on 28 August 2025.22

  • Vietnam Mathematical Society

    Hội Toán học Việt Nam · the learned society

    This page gives no founding date for the Society, because the sources disagree. The MacTutor archive records 15 August 1965;9 the Society's own site is currently marking sixty years counted from 1966.23 We have not resolved that discrepancy and do not think a page like this should quietly pick a side. Lê Văn Thiêm was its first president. It is Vietnam's adhering organisation to the International Mathematical Union, the channel through which a country takes part in the IMU.8

University mathematics faculties.

Universities host mathematics research alongside teaching. The five units below are named as examples, with a link to each. This is a selective list, and it carries no ranking.

At the VNU University of Science in Hanoi the unit is Khoa Toán - Cơ - Tin học, the Faculty of Mathematics, Mechanics and Informatics. Down in Ho Chi Minh City, the University of Science at Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City has Khoa Toán - Tin học, which traces itself to a mathematics division formed in 1957 and is organised into seven departments.24 That faculty publishes no official English name, so the Vietnamese form is the one to cite.

Renaming is a live hazard here. The mathematics unit at Hanoi University of Science and Technology became the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics in 2023, having been the School of Applied Mathematics and Informatics before that.10 At Hanoi National University of Education, Khoa Toán - Tin now sits inside a newly created constituent school, Trường Toán học và Công nghệ thông tin.25 A faculty name taken from a paper published in 2019 may no longer exist in that form. Ton Duc Thang University has a Faculty of Mathematics and Statistics.

How the work is funded and directed.

Vietnam has treated mathematics as a subject worth a dedicated national programme for more than fifteen years.

The first phase, the National Program for the Development of Mathematics to 2020, was approved by Decision 1483/QĐ-TTg on 17 August 2010.11 VIASM was its main implementing institution.2 The second phase, approved by Decision 2200/QĐ-TTg on 22 December 2020, runs to 2030 and names the Ministry of Education and Training as the agency in charge.12 The lead has moved from an institute to a ministry.

The 2030 targets use the verb phấn đấu, to strive for, so they are aspirations. Five higher education institutions ranked in the world's top 500 for mathematics, two of them in the top 400. Twice as many papers in SCIE-indexed journals as in 2010 to 2020, and twice as many visiting foreign scientists. At least five leading directions in applied mathematics and mathematics in industry. Support for training around 400 doctorates in mathematics, applied mathematics and statistics.12

Competitive grants are separate. NAFOSTED, the National Foundation for Science and Technology Development, was created by Decree 122/2003/NĐ-CP of 22 October 2003.26 It treats basic research funding as one of its core activities across the natural sciences and engineering,13 and mathematics has a scientific council of its own among the eight covering that field, according to the science-policy magazine Tia Sáng.27

What has this produced? The most careful answer comes from SciMath, a manually curated database of publications by Vietnamese mathematicians presented to VIASM's Scientific Council in November 2020. As of that report it held 8,372 publications and profiles of 1,566 Vietnamese and 1,492 foreign authors going back to 1947.14 The report's authors, who include Ngô Bảo Châu, Lê Tuấn Hoa and Lê Minh Hà, open by observing that what is known about the development of Vietnamese mathematics "usually comes from discrete essays such as anecdotes or interviews of renowned mathematicians". They describe the literature in those terms, and it is part of the reason this page exists.

On raw output, the summary report for the 2010 to 2020 programme, as reported by Dân trí, put Vietnamese mathematics at a "relatively reliable" world ranking of 50 to 55 in 2010, and found that by 2018 the figure came out at 32, 35 or 38 depending on which database was consulted.15 The spread is the honest finding, and a single rank drawn from it would be misleading. The sturdier number in the same report is the count of papers indexed by MathSciNet, which went from about 300 in 2010 to 767 in 2019.

The same report dates modern mathematics in Vietnam from Lê Văn Thiêm's first international publication in 1947.14 Ngô Bảo Châu, who received the 2010 Fields Medal for his proof of the Fundamental Lemma in the theory of automorphic forms,16 has written that in the 1970s and 1980s Vietnamese mathematicians were "mostly trained in the USSR and eastern european countries, lived and worked in spartan conditions with very limited connection with the West".17 The bodies described on this page belong to the period after that.

What this map leaves out.

Two omissions, both concerning the past.

The first is institutional. As of July 2026 our searches found no department, institute or research centre in Vietnam dedicated to the history of mathematics. Scholarship in the field continues without one. The Institute of Mathematics hosts a standing seminar on the history of mathematics and the history of mathematics teaching,28 and a short overview of the field was published in the Thang Long Journal of Science by Hà Huy Khoái, Tạ Duy Phượng and Alexei Volkov.18 Volkov works on the history of mathematics at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan and has published repeatedly on the surviving Vietnamese treatises.29 Individual scholars sustain the field; no institution is charged with it.

The second omission is the material. A 2013 survey counted twenty-two Hán–Nôm mathematical books held between the Institute of Hán–Nôm Studies and the National Library of Vietnam, most of them without a confirmed author or date.19 Reading that corpus requires archival and digitization work as much as mathematical work, which is a different activity from what the institutes above are constituted to do. Our page on the Vietnamese mathematical record covers the holdings and their condition in detail.

VietAlpha works on that second gap. By its own account it is an independent lab, part of CS Inspiration, that digitizes and studies Vietnam's mathematical record from the surviving Hán–Nôm treatises to the current Ministry of Education and Training curriculum, and publishes the results as open datasets. It sits outside the map above and has a different remit.

Sources.

  1. VIASM, History

    The founding decisions and dates, the appointment of the directors, and the statement that establishing VIASM was the central object of the national programme.

  2. VIASM, Introduction

    The institute's description of its own activity, its annual postdoctoral fellowships and teacher training, the scope of subjects it covers, and its statement that it was the main institution implementing the National Program for the Development of Mathematics from 2010 to 2020.

  3. Institute of Mathematics, Giới thiệu chung về Viện Toán học

    Decision 25/CP of 5 February 1969, the 1970 start of operations under Lê Văn Thiêm, his appointment as director in 1975, Hoàng Tụy's in 1980, and the institute's research departments.

  4. Acta Mathematica Vietnamica, editorial board and journal history

    Lê Văn Thiêm listed as editor-in-chief from 1964 to 1983, and the journal's account of its 1964 predecessor title and the 1976 change of name.

  5. ICRTM, History

    The 2017 UNESCO agreement, VAST Decision 307/QĐ-VHL of 5 March 2018, and Decision 701/QĐ-TTg of 12 May 2021.

  6. CNRS Mathématiques, Creation of a Franco-Vietnamese research laboratory in mathematics

    The 1 January 2023 creation date, the three partner institutions, and the laboratory's research themes.

  7. Việt Nam News, UNESCO extends recognition of two Category II science centres in Việt Nam

    The eight-year extension of ICRTM's Category 2 status to 2034, decided at the UNESCO Executive Board in mid-April 2026.

  8. International Mathematical Union, Vietnam

    The Vietnam Mathematical Society as Vietnam's adhering organisation to the IMU.

  9. MacTutor, The Vietnamese Mathematical Society

    The 15 August 1965 founding date and Lê Văn Thiêm as first president. Cited here as one side of a disagreement, not as settled.

  10. Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, History

    The chain of renamings ending in the 2023 change to Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics.

  11. VIASM, National Program

    Decision 1483/QĐ-TTg of 17 August 2010 approving the National Program for the Development of Mathematics to 2020.

  12. Decision 2200/QĐ-TTg of 22 December 2020

    The date and text of the 2021 to 2030 programme, the naming of the Ministry of Education and Training as lead agency, and the 2030 targets quoted above.

  13. NAFOSTED, Nghiên cứu cơ bản

    Basic research funding as a core activity of the foundation, covering the natural sciences and engineering.

  14. Ngô Bảo Châu and others, The 80-year development of Vietnam mathematical research (arXiv:2011.09328)

    The SciMath figures as of the November 2020 report, the quoted remark about anecdotes and interviews, and the dating of modern Vietnamese mathematics from 1947.

  15. Dân trí, Công bố quốc tế của toán học Việt Nam đang đứng ở đâu so với châu Á?

    The 50 to 55 ranking for 2010, the 32, 35 or 38 spread for 2018, and the MathSciNet counts of about 300 papers in 2010 and 767 in 2019, reported from the national programme's summary report.

  16. International Mathematical Union, Fields Medal 2010 citation for Ngô Bảo Châu

    The wording of the award: the proof of the Fundamental Lemma in the theory of automorphic forms.

  17. Ngô Bảo Châu, Mathematics in Vietnam: Past Participle and Present Continuous (IMU Commission for Developing Countries)

    The quoted description of Vietnamese mathematicians in the 1970s and 1980s.

  18. Hà Huy Khoái, Tạ Duy Phượng and Alexei Volkov, A brief overview of the history of Vietnamese mathematics and the history of teaching mathematics in Vietnam, Thang Long Journal of Science

    Evidence that work on the history of Vietnamese mathematics is published, and by whom, in the absence of a dedicated institution.

  19. Alexei Volkov, Về những cuốn sách toán cổ xưa của người Việt, translated by Tạ Duy Phương

    The enumeration of surviving Hán–Nôm mathematical books and the note that most lack a confirmed author or date. A popular republication of scholarly work, used here only for the count.

  20. IRL France-Vietnam in Mathematics and its Applications

    The laboratory's statement that it is under the joint responsibility of the CNRS, VIASM and VAST, which supply its staff and resources; its two Hanoi addresses; and the research visits, master's programmes and CIMPA schools it supports.

  21. VietnamPlus, International centres for physics, mathematics research launched

    The public launch of ICRTM alongside the International Centre for Physics in October 2021, and the description of the two centres' remit.

  22. VAST, Phan Thị Hà Dương officially took over as Director of IRL FVMA

    The change of director from Ngô Bảo Châu and the ceremony held at VAST on 28 August 2025.

  23. Hội Toán học Việt Nam (Vietnam Mathematical Society)

    The Society's own site, which is currently marking sixty years counted from 1966. Cited as the other side of the founding-date disagreement.

  24. Khoa Toán - Tin học, Trường Đại học Khoa học Tự nhiên, ĐHQG-HCM, Giới thiệu

    The faculty's Vietnamese name, its origin in a mathematics division formed in 1957, and its seven departments.

  25. Trường Toán học và Công nghệ thông tin, Hanoi National University of Education

    Khoa Toán - Tin as a unit of the newly created constituent school. The date of the restructuring is not stated there, so this page gives none.

  26. Decree 122/2003/NĐ-CP of 22 October 2003

    The instrument creating the National Foundation for Science and Technology Development.

  27. Tia Sáng, NAFOSTED công bố 8 hội đồng khoa học ngành KHTN&KT mới

    The list of eight scientific councils for basic research in the natural sciences and engineering, the first of which is mathematics.

  28. Institute of Mathematics, Semina Lịch sử toán học và Lịch sử giảng dạy toán học

    The seminar announcement establishing that a standing seminar on the history of mathematics and the history of mathematics teaching is hosted at the Institute.

  29. Alexei Volkov, Toán học Việt Nam thời kỳ Trung đại, translated from Mathematics in Vietnam, Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures, 3rd edn, Springer, 2016, pp. 2818-2833

    Volkov's affiliation to National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, and the record of his publications on the surviving Vietnamese mathematical treatises.

A useful map states where it ends.