Bửu Hội
Prince Nguyễn Phúc Bửu Hội was a Vietnamese diplomat, scientist and cancer researcher.
Family
Born, Bửu Hội was a native of the former imperial capital of Huế. He was a great-great-grandson of Emperor Minh Mạng, who ruled Vietnam from 1820 until his death in 1841. Mạng had been a staunch Confucianist, known for his conservative philosophy, in which he shunned the western world and technological and scientific innovations. He resisted Catholic and Buddhist missionaries in Vietnam and was known for his hostility toward them, as he believed they were undermining the Emperor's Mandate of Heaven.Mạng's father was Emperor Gia Long, who had united Vietnam under its current state. Gia Long had reunited the nation under the newly formed Nguyễn Dynasty with the help of French volunteers recruited by the Jesuit missionary Pigneau de Behaine after more than 200 years of north–south division and multiple wars between the Nguyễn lords in the south and the Trịnh lords in the north.
Bửu Hội was a Confucianist, instilled with a sense of duty to family and service to the nation. In contrast to his ancestors, Bửu Hội was also a secular-minded Buddhist, and his mother later became a Buddhist nun under the dharma name Thích Diệu Huế. His father Ưng Úy headed the Privy Council of the Imperial Family. Ưng Úy was the Minister of Rites at Bảo Đại's court until 9 May 1945. During First Indochina War, Ưng Úy joined Vietminh's government and showed support to Ho Chi Minh during war against French.
Education
Bửu Hội completed his secondary schooling at the Lycée Albert Sarraut, a prestigious French-established school for the upper-class in Hanoi, the colonial capital of Vietnam. He then studied for a degree in pharmacy at the University of Hanoi while simultaneously auditing courses from the Faculty of Medicine. He had developed an interest in science from his youth, noting that this was "because of the desire of his mother and partly because of his own belief in the human value of science".Hội left Vietnam in 1935 to study in Paris and was never to return as a resident. There, he befriended Ngô Đình Nhu, the younger brother of Ngô Đình Diệm while in France. Nhu was a staunch advocate of personalism and later became known for his efforts in running the clandestine Cần Lao party, which supplied Diệm's power base and acted as a security apparatus to crush dissent in South Vietnam. This formed a bond between the two men which saw Bửu Hội later serve in the diplomatic corps and as a scientific advisor to Diệm.
Scientific work
At the Sorbonne, he followed the regular curriculum towards his doctorate. He completed a licence ès sciences degree while serving as an Intern of Pharmacy at Paris hospitals. After a short stint under Jean Perrin in the Institute of Chemical Physics, he began his doctoral research in organic chemistry. He worked in the laboratory of Pauline Ramart, investigating the spectrophotometry of organic compounds.During World War II
Bửu Hội's career was briefly interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. He volunteered in the French Army and served until Paris fell to Nazi Germany in May 1940. He found himself in Toulouse in the southern zone under the fascist Vichy France government. With the help of the physicist Paul Langevin whom he had met at Perrin's party, he was able to re-enter the Nazi-occupied northern France and return to Paris. He joined the research staff of the National Center of Scientific Research in 1941, and upon the Liberation of France in 1944 was appointed Maitre de Conferences at the École Polytechnique by the Provisional Government of Charles de Gaulle.At around the same period in 1944, Bửu Hội met Antoine Lacassagne, the Director of Biological Research at the Radium Institute. At the time Lacassagne was establishing an interdisciplinary team for exploring the possibilities and uses of a hypothesis by Otto Schmidt, which became known as the electronic theory of hydrocarbon carcinogenesis. One of the effects of the Nazi occupation was that the foreign scientific literature brought into France was almost entirely German. As a result, this exposed Lacassagne to what to be the scientific foundation of his highly fruitful collaboration with Bửu Hội.
At the time, the electronic theory of molecular structure was in its formative years and was not considered as a vehicle by biologists for explaining phenomena, however Lacassagne saw promise in the prospect of Schmidt's hypothesis in attempting to explain carcinogenesis by a combination of elements of electron quantum theory, geometry and chemical structure.
Hội and his team relocated from the Radium Institute to larger facilities at the Institute of Chemistry of Natural Substances in 1960. The new quarters was part of the National Centrer of Scientific Research laboratory group at Gif-sur-Yvette near Paris. In 1962 he was promoted to Director of Research. Around 1967, he established further research groups under his guidance; one at Orléans at the Marcel Delepine Center and a second at the Lannelogue Institute at Vanves.
Scientific discoveries
His research spread beyond chemical carcinogenesis. He also published widely in organic chemistry, pharmacology, therapeutics, epidemiology and biochemistry. He started his research career with investigations on chaulmoogric and hydnocarpic acids in his Polytechnique laboratory. At the time, these were the only products used for treating leprosy. Within a few years, he had established himself as an international authority in the chemotherapy of the disease. He delineated the role of the cyclopentene ring and its double bond and of the chain length in determining the toxicity and leprostatic activity of these compounds. Although from the time of his 1944 meeting with Lacassagne onwards he was preoccupied with the study of chemical carcinogenesis, he continued to devote substantial effort to the chemotherapy of leprosy and the associated chemotherapy of tuberculosis.Chemical carcinogenesis
The overwhelming amount of Bửu Hội's contributions are in the field of chemical carcinogenesis and the synthesis of related organic chemical compounds. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he had extensive collaborations with the quantum chemistry personnel of the Radium Institute on various aspects of the electronic theory of carcinogenesis. Bửu Hội was the first to propose the involvement of noncovalent forces. Together with Lacassagne and Rudali, in the 1940s he became the first to describe the phenomena of synergisma and antagonism between carcinogens. He demonstrated this by using hydrocarbons on the skin of mice and later extended this to hepatic and other carcinogens. Starting in 1947, he collaborated with François Zajdela and Lacassagne in exploring the relationships between the structure and carcinogenic activity of polynuclear compounds. The study spanned a groundbreaking scale and depth.These involved the fundamental ring systems and derivatives of 1,2-benzanthracene, the dibenzopyrenes, steranthrenes, anthanthrene, 1,2,3,4-dibenzanthracene, a variety of benzo and dibenzofluoranthenes. This was extended to large-molecular-size and "hypercondensed" hydrocarbons, ring opening and partial hydrogenation. During his study of dibenzopyrenes, he discovered a molecular arrangement involving the framework of aromatic hydrocarbons. His studies of the carcinogenic azulenophenalenes led him to question the role of aromaticity. Aside from his studies with aza-replaced hydrocarbons, benz- and dibenzacridines and –carbazoles, he also synthesised and tested a number of new structural types of heteroaromatics with reference to the nature, number and position of the heteroatoms. These included the naphtho and benzo derivatives of pyridocarbazole and beta-carboline, heteroaromatics with sulfur, arsenic or selenium replacements. These were either alone or in association with nitrogen, as well as sulfur and nitrogen containing pseudoazulenes. A series of hydrocarbon-like polynuclear lactones were explored with the intent of establishing a connection between polynuclear aromatics and aflatoxins. Such studies of heteroatomic polynuclears led him to propose a "newer picture" of a carcinogenic hydrocarbon, helping the generalise the classical K-region hypothesis.
He contributed to studies on the carcinogenicity of 4-nitroquinoline-N-oxide derivatives, the production of plant tumors by a nitrosamine. He also studied metabolism and protein binding of polynuclears and the effect of the binding o DNA replication and transcription, testing the effect of various carcinogens on the hatching of shrimp eggs. From the mid-1960s onwards, Bửu Hội increasingly turned his focus to the structural facets of polynuclears which determine their ability to induce microsomal enzyme synthesis, in particular involving zoxazolamine and dicoumarol hydroxylation. Aside from his study of fundamental organic chemistry, chemical carcinogenesis and chemotherapy of leprosy and tuberculosis, Bửu Hội's team also conducted research into a wide range of issues of biological and therapeutic interest. These included the synthesis and testing anti-inflammatory non-steroid compounds, substituted sex hormones, anti-coagulant substances and their potentiation, antidiabetic agents, treatment of hypertension by methyl-DOPA, antioxidants and the chemophylaxy of aging and the toxicity of dioxine among others.
Professional appointments
In 1947, Hồ Chí Minh named him as the Rector of the University of Hanoi. He later served as science advisor to Diệm and was appointed in 1960 as the Director of the Atomic Energy Establishment of Vietnam. In this capacity, he was a key figure in the establishment of an Atomic Energy Research Center.Political pursuits
Mid 1940s to Early 1960s
While in Paris, Bửu Hội had not limited his activities to scientific research. He had worked with Hồ Chí Minh's Vietminh to form the Democratic Republic of Vietnam which sought to establish independence from its formation in September 1945. His international reputation, generated by his scientific achievements, lent prestige to the Hồ Chí Minh government. Hội later broke off ties in 1950 when the Communists imposed a dictatorship on the resistance movement.In the early 1950s, Bửu Hội traveled to the United States. After the disruption of the Second World War, the president of the American Chemical Society had asked a colleague to resume contact with French chemistry circles by selecting three men regarded to be the outstanding chemists in France. Hội was one of the three selected by the ACS. At the time he was director of research in organic chemistry at the Radium Institute in Paris. Hội accepted the invitation of the ACS to deliver a series of lectures in the United States, where, in 1951, he traveled to the Maryknoll Seminaries in Lakewood, New Jersey to offer his support to Diệm in his quest to form an independent Vietnamese government.
In early 1953, he traveled as a private citizen to the office of the Vietminh in Rangoon, the capital of Burma. Despite leaving the Vietminh three years earlier, his nationalist credentials allowed him to secure an audience. At the time he was the elected president of an association of some 25,000 Vietnamese workers and soldiers stranded in France after the Second World War. He had also been a delegated to the conference at Fontainebleau, the collapse of which had helped to spark the First Indochina War in 1946. Bửu Hội was accompanied by Jacques Raphael-Leygues, a radical socialist politician.
Before departing Paris, Hội had been authorised by French President Vincent Auriol to propose the opening of direct negotiations with France. He left a letter in Rangoon to be delivered to Vietminh leaders, prophetically predicting that this would be the last opportunity for them to deal with France directly without third part interference. He predicted that the United States would eventually intervene with force unprecedented in Vietnam if the situation was not resolved. Neither the French nor the Vietminh made further efforts to pursue negotiations. Years later, French officials blamed domestic political feuds and the lack of support from some sections of their government. The Vietminh blamed logistical difficulties for their late, minimal reply. After the French were defeated at Điện Biên Phủ in early 1954, Vietnam was partitioned at the Geneva Conference.
In August 1954, Bửu Hội returned to South Vietnam for a visit. Diem had been named Prime Minister of what was then the French backed State of Vietnam. Vietnam was supposed to be reunified after national elections in 1956 following a temporary partition and transitional phase. Diệm was in trouble as the generals of the Vietnamese National Army disobeyed him and the national police were controlled by the Bình Xuyên, an armed criminal syndicate. Parts of the Mekong Delta were controlled by the private armies of the Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo religious sects.
Hội went to meet Phạm Công Tắc, the pope of the Cao Đài, and his entourage in their stronghold of Tây Ninh west of Saigon near the border with Cambodia. He went to a secret meeting with the Cao Đài general Trình Minh Thế at his base on Núi Bà Đen. Hội went on to meet with the Hòa Hảo in the Delta city of Cần Thơ and also met with Bình Xuyên leaders in Cholon. He further met with labor groups, army officers and representatives of the educated class. Later when the Saigon press was censored and partly shut down, he outlined his vision for Vietnam in the Paris magazine L'Express.