Prince Nguyễn Phúc Bửu Hội (c. 1915 – 28 January 1972) was a Vietnamese diplomat, scientist and cancer researcher. Family Born circa 1915, 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