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 (CNRS) 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 , 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