Center in Da Lat On 28 October, Hội opened the Atomic Energy Center in Đà Lạt in his role as the director general of the Office of Atomic Energy. Diệm said of Hội's work, "In the non-aligned world, we have more friends now, thanks to the diplomatic bases laid by Professor Bửu Hội in Africa." On 31 October, he performed his last public duty in South Vietnam. Hội visited Nhu along with two Buddhist monks and ask him to intervene with Diệm to free "all Buddhist dignitaries, laymen and students till under detention". Nhu "promised to obtain from the president a favourable answer to this request". Diệm and Nhu were assassinated two days later after being deposed in a coup. Hội left Vietnam after the coup to resume his scientific research. He only returned on the occasion of the funeral of his mother. Awards Bửu Hội was a multiple laureate of the French Academy of Sciences, the French Academy of Medicine and the French Ministry of Education. His work in cancer research specifically yielded awards from the French Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale and the French league against cancer. Despite working for almost his entire academic career in France, he also received awards from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and received funding from the US National Cancer Institute. Death Hội died of a heart attack on 8 January 1972, his native country still divided and ravaged by civil war. It was only a few weeks after the passing of his research colleague Antoine Lacassagne, ending a prolific partnership described by Cancer Research as a "heroic and important chapter of the study of carcinogenesis". It went on to say that "his death robbed French science of one of its most illustrious figures". He had totaled almost 1100 scientific publications. His body was laid in state for five days in a sanctuary at Rue Gassendi in Paris, where French and Vietnamese alike paid their respects. Hội's stature also allowed him to develop contacts with French President Charles de Gaulle, who favored neutralizing Vietnam in the early 1960s. With the support of Bửu Hội, de Gaulle advised his ambassador in Saigon, Roger Lalouette, to float the concept with Diệm and Nhu. References Sources 1910s births 1972 deaths People from Huế Vietnamese diplomats Vietnamese biochemists Vietnamese Confucianists Vietnamese Buddhists 20th-century French chemists Nguyen dynasty Commandeurs of