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aerospace engineering, Ph.D. in mathematics, professor emeritus of aerospace engineering, is so amazing. I found his biography, A Life in Hypersonic Flight, among papers in the family library and was mesmerized. How could anybody live such an astounding life? The blurb says, "His seminal work on the guidance, dynamics and optimal control of space vehicles has played a fundamental role in space exploration." I can't even begin to list all his achievements, but suffice it to say that his original contributions to the 
development of supersonic and faster atmospheric vehicles and space vehicles and their control makes him a real, true-life "hidden figure," although, of course, he is well known in the field: His biography was jointly published by JPL and NASA. We couldn't have gone to the moon or developed the space shuttle without his research. And before that, he was head of the Republic of Viet Nam's Air Force and was also a pilot and officer in the French Air Force. He fought the Viet Minh and the Viet Cong.
Oh, and he is also a prize-winning, wildly popular novelist. In 1960, he wrote a novel, the title in English, A Pilot's Life, which became a best seller (now in its sixth printing) and Vinh was awarded Viet Nam's National Literature Prize. The novel is in the form of a series of letters written by a pilot to his sweetheart.
Vinh's real-life sweetheart was Cung Thi Toan. They were married for more than 50 years at the time of her death in 2008. They have four children, all successful, productive Americans.
The father of Mrs. Vinh, Cung Dinh Van, was a national hero, an athlete and
political leader. He was executed by Ho Chi Minh along with other nationalist leaders in September, 1946. Cung Thi Toan was fourteen years old at the time. Her story, and how she and her family survived the decades to come is both tragic and inspiring.
Two of the nationalist political leaders who were executed at the same time as her father were Pham Quynh, a prominent scholar, and Ngo Dinh Khoi, the brother of Ngo Dinh Diem who would become the president of the Republic of Vietnam in 1954 and attempt to lead his country into the modern world. Had he succeeded, South Viet Nam would very likely be as prosperous and successful as South Korea, at least.
Here's an extract of a monograph on optimal trans-lunar injection trajectories -- a trans-lunar injection is aerospace jargon for leaving earth orbit and heading for the moon. It has to be done just exactly right. Nobody had ever done it before. Nobody knew how to do it. Vinh was on the team that helped figure out how to achieve it.
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NGUYEN XUAN VINH – A LIFE IN HYPERSONIC FLIGHT
