Trần Đại Nghĩa

Trần Đại Nghĩa (13 September 1913 – 9 August 1997) was a scientist, military engineer, and father of the defense industry of Vietnam. He was a Major-General and an Academician. He was awarded the Order of Ho Chi Minh and named a Hero of Labor. He was elected as a Academician to the former USSR Academy of Sciences.

Early life
Trần Đại Nghĩa was born Phạm Quang Lễ in Chánh Hiệp, Tam Bình commune, Vĩnh Long Province, to a poor Catholic peasent family on 13 September 1913. He received a bachelors in 1933 in Hanoi. After two years working in the U.S. embassy, he met journalist Dương Quang Ngưu who helped him obtain a Chasseloup-Laubat Fellowship to study in Paris. In 1935, he arrived in France and subsequently graduated with bachelors in engineering and mathematics having attended, among others, the École Polytechnique. He then went to work at the École nationale supérieure de l'aéronautique. In 1942, he moved to Germany, where he worked in various factories on the production of weapons and aircraft.

Revolutionary activities
Nghia met Ho Chi Minh in Paris in 1946 and returned to Vietnam with him on the SS Dumont de Urville, joining the rebels in the north of the country, where he participated in the organization of the production of weapons in the mountain forests. On 5 December 1946 he received from Ho Chi Minh his new revolutionary name, Trần Đại Nghĩa, and because of his military and technical knowledge was made chief of artillery of the Vietnam People's Army. In 1947 he successfully tested his design for a built-in-North-Vietnam bazooka, the first of many weapon systems that he divised for in-country manufacture. In 1948 he received the rank of Major General, and the following year was then given the new position as Director of Military Research (now the Institute of Military Science and Technology).

In 1950 Nghia left the military and began developing the industrial capacity of the North. In the years 1950 to 1960 he was Deputy Minister of Industry and Commerce. In 1952 he was given the title Hero of Labor and inducted into the Order of Ho Chi Minh. On 6 March 1956 became the first rector of the Polytechnic University established in Hanoi. From 1960 to 1962 he was Minister of Heavy Industry. In 1965 he was appointed Chairman of the State Committee on Science and Technology for Vietnam.

Trần Đại Nghĩa died in Ho Chi Minh City on 9 August 1997, at the age of 85.

Honors
In 1996, a year before his death, Nghia was awarded the Ho Chi Minh Award.

In 2000, the Tran Dai Nghia High School was named after him.

in 2010, an ocean survey vessel was named after him.

In 2013, the Vietnam Post issued a stamp honoring him on the 100th anniversary of his birth.