How it came to be: Sinh talking about her thesis, shown in the hard-cover printed version she is holding, in Hanoi. — AFP
As American bombers flew overhead, pioneering professor Hoang Xuan Sinh completed her thesis by the light of a kerosene lamp in the Vietnamese jungle, with letters from French maths genius Alexandre Grothendieck as her only guidance.
Vietnam’s first female mathematics professor, Sinh, now 91, recalled trying to write in December 1972, as the B-52s of the US Air Force unleashed a deluge of bombs on Hanoi and surrounding provinces.
