President Tran Duc Luong (centre) salutes the first Ho Chi Minh prize winners in a ceremony to acknowledge their scientific and artistic contributions. Professor Hoang Tuy, one of his generation’s leading mathematicians, stands in the front row, fourth from right.

I came to Hoang Tuy’s home on Hanoi’s Doi Can Street on a winter day in late 2006. The professor, now 79-years-old and beholden to a hearing aid, received me with a big smile.

Tuy is considered one of the fathers of optimisation theory, a mathematical technique designed to find the best possible outcome given a series of constraints. The theory is considered a cornerstone of modern economics and credited with clearing the muddy waters of everything from long-distance transport to rice growing.

So it should come as little surprise that some of the world’s top mathematicians and programmers will celebrate Tuy’s 80th birthday when they gather in Rouen, France, a little under a year from now.

Tuy was born on December 12, 1927 to family of Confucian scholars in Xuan Dai Village, located in the province of Quang Nam. The family was well known thanks to the brother of his grandfather, Hoang Dieu (1832-1882), a northern provincial leader who killed himself when the fort of Hanoi fell to French invaders.

The family was also renowned for its scholarly achievements. One of Hoang Tuy’s brothers, Hoang Kiet, became a famous artist while two others, Hoang Phe and Hoang Chung, are accomplished professors.

In his early childhood, Tuy was the top student in his village school, excelling in both math and literature. A young Tuy was eventually sent to the famous Quoc Hoc School in Hue for secondary studies. There, while he still topped his class in both subjects, he began devoting more time to mathematics.

Tuy poses with Russian mathematician L.V. Kantorovitch, 1974 Nobel Prize winner in economics.

At the age of 15, he was stricken with a severe bout of pneumonia that left him partially paralysed. Thanks to treatments from a local acupuncturist he recovered, but had to leave Quoc Hoc and join a private school. In 1946, despite all the difficulties, he topped national high school examinations and travelled to Hanoi to attend the College of Sciences.

Unfortunately, war broke out and forced him to return home. But before he left, he criss-crossed Hanoi in search of mathematical texts. In 1951, he was teaching in a resistance zone when he learned that renowned professor Le Van Thiem was returning to Viet Bac, located in mountainous northern Vietnam, from Switzerland.

He immediately asked the local Department of Education for permission to travel to Tuyen Quang, the capital of the resistance government, to meet the eminent professor. At the time, the route along the Truong Son Range was still very much a small mountain path amidst the jungle unlike the later famous Ho Chi Minh Trail.

After receiving the go-ahead, an enthusiastic Tuy set off, bringing along only rice, water, his mathematical books and anti-malarial drugs. Travellers along the route face constant threats from French ambushes, tiger attacks and disease carrying mosquitoes.

It took Tuy almost six months of walking before he arrived in Tuyen Quang, only to learn that the professor he sought had already left for China. So, he decided to extend his trip. After crossing the border into China, he headed for Naning, where he joined other Vietnamese students.

When Hanoi was liberated in 1954, he returned and was appointed lecturer at the College of Sciences. In July 1957, he was among the first eight scientists sent to the Soviet Union for post graduate work. He spent just over a year completing his doctorate thesis, a surprisingly short period of time for a man who studied almost by himself.

In 1997, as he approached his 70th birthday, the Swedish LinkoŠping University’s Institute of Technology held a three-day seminar under the banner "Optimisation – From Local to Global" in honour of Tuy. A publishing house released the workshop’s proceedings, which were gobbled up by international scientists. Tuy’s reputation as the father of global optimisation had been born.

Professor Tuy still teaches in the capital.