Prof. Hoang Tuy, a prominent Vietnamese applied mathematician who laid the foundation for institutional development of mathematics in his home country, passed away on Sunday at the age of 92.

Tuy was one of the most celebrated Vietnam mathematicians, credited for being the birth father of global optimization, a branch of applied mathematics that deals with functions.

He drew his last breath at his home in Hanoi at around 3:30 pm, his family told the press on Sunday.

Born in 1927 in Quang Nam Province of central Vietnam, Tuy lost his father at the age of four and suffered from constant illnesses but continued to thrive academically nonetheless.

In March 1959, Tuy became one of the first two Vietnamese to receive a doctorate in mathematics from Moscow State University, then known as Lomonosov University, in Russia.

He was dean of the faculty of mathematics at the Vietnam National University – Hanoi from 1961 until 1968 and president of the Vietnam Institute of Mathematics from 1980 to 1989.

In 1964, Tuy introduced a new cutting-plane method, the concavity cut or 'Tuy’s cut' as it came to be named, laying the first foundation for the introduction of 'global optimization' as a branch of applied mathematics.

The late professor had over 100 scientific papers published in prestigious international journals in his lifetime.

His book 'Global Optimization: Deterministic Approaches,' which Tuy co-authored with Prof. Reiner Horst, is considered by scholars as the 'bible' of the mathematical discipline.

On his 70th birthday in August 1997, Tuy was honored by Sweden’s Institute of Technology at Linköping University for his “pioneering research” in global optimization and general mathematical planning.

Tuy was also a vocal critic of the shortcomings of education in Vietnam and was not reluctant to made his voice heard on changes that he thought would be beneficial to the country’s educational system.

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