Nguyen Xuan Vinh

Nguyễn Xuân Vinh (January 1, 1930 – July 23, 2022) was a Vietnamese-American aerospace scientist and educator. Vinh was Professor Emeritus of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan, where he taught for nearly thirty years. His seminal work on the guidance, dynamics and optimal control of space vehicles and their interaction with the atmosphere played a fundamental role in space exploration and technological development.

Education Xuân Vinh attended the French Air Force Academy at Salon de Provence where he specialized in Aeronautical Engineering. In 1954, he graduated from the nearby Aix-Marseille University in Mathematics and was commissioned as an officer. The following year, he qualified as a French Air Force multi-engine pilot.

In 1965, Vinh was the recipient of the first PhD in Aerospace Engineering conferred by the University of Colorado at Boulder supervised by Adolf Busemann. and more than 100 papers in mathematics, astrodynamics and trajectory optimization.

In 1960, to promote a cadet recruitment program for the newly created Air Force Academy in Vietnam, he wrote a novel: Pilot’s Life, which became a best-seller (now in its sixth printing) and he was awarded the Republic of Vietnam’s National Literature Prize. The novel is in the form of a series of letters written by a pilot to his sweetheart.

Awards and honors In 1994, he was given the Mechanics and Control of Flight Award by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He was a member of the International Academy of Astronautics and a foreign member of the French National Academy of Air and Space.

In 2006, he won the Dirk Brouwer Award, awarded by the American Astronautical Society, for outstanding lifetime achievement in the field of space flight mechanics and astrodynamics.

Late Year and Death Vinh was baptized as a Catholic at St. Bonaventure Catholic Church in Huntington Beach, California on October 19, 2016, with the baptismal name Anphongsô (Alphonso).

Vinh died at 2:39 p.m. on Saturday, July 23, 2022 at his home in Costa Mesa, California, at the age of 92.