Professor Doan Quynh was a pure intellectual; no matter the moment you encountered him, you could always sense the character of an intellectual. He belonged to the very few exceptions to the "laws of the majority" where each person plays many roles (William Shakespeare) and a drop of blood is often tested: a little intellectual - a little farmer - a little … (Nguyen Duy).

Professor Doan Quynh was born on August 27, 1933, into an intellectual family. His character was shaped primarily by his family's traditions. His mother, Dang Thi Hieu (Ninette Jean), was a beautiful and intelligent student at Dong Khanh High School in Hue . Despite her beauty and virtuous character, Dang Thi Hieu passed away prematurely at the young age of 35.

Doan Quynh's father, Mr. Doan Nong, was a Western-educated intellectual. After the August Revolution, from 1946 to 1954, Mr. Doan Nong served as the principal of Lam Son School (Thanh Hoa). After peace was restored, Mr. Doan Nong moved to Hanoi to become the vice-principal of Chu Van An School, and then later worked as a French language lecturer at Hanoi Pedagogical University until his retirement in 1968.

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Professor Doan Quynh translated the 1967 lecture by the great mathematician Grothendieck.

Graduating from the first cohort of the Mathematics department at Hanoi Pedagogical University in 1956, Doan Quynh was retained as a lecturer and in 1961 was sent to pursue doctoral studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University (Soviet Union). He belonged to the first generation of intellectuals who received formal university education under the socialist education system. At Lomonosov, he conducted research under the guidance of Professor Rashevsky, head of the Department of Differential Geometry.

His most significant research achievement during this early period was published in 1968 in a 60-page paper entitled "Poincaré Polynomials of Compact Homogeneous Riemann Spaces with Irreducible Stationary Groups - Contributing to the Classification of Lie Groups," a work that was still cited many years later.

He and other mathematics lecturers of his age entered the most active phase of their careers when the war against America was raging fiercely, and the country faced difficulties in every respect. Despite all this, their academic activities remained serious and unwavering.

In 1967, amidst the bombings of war, the great mathematician of the 20th century, Grothendieck, made a trip to North Vietnam. During his 21 days in Vietnam, Grothendieck gave a series of lectures on fundamental issues of modern mathematics. Doan Quynh, one of the most talented mathematicians among the attendees, was chosen to be Grothendieck's interpreter.

The trip left a profound impression on Grothendieck and led to the theorem " The Existence of a Vietnamese Mathematical Foundation ". Grothendieck presented a proof of this theorem in an article (English version).