Five Vietnamese have been named in the list of the world’s most influential 10,000 scientists, which was recently published by the US’s PLOS Biology Journal.

One of the most prominent names, which was honored is Prof. Nguyen Dinh Duc from Vietnam National University (VNU-Hanoi), who ranked 5,949th globally and 96th in the engineering field.

The second Vietnamese who made it to the list is Assoc. Prof. Le Hoang Son from VNU-Hanoi at the 6,766th place.

He was followed by Prof. Nguyen Xuan Hung of the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology who ranked 6,818th, Prof. Bui Tien Dieu of Duy Tan University at the 9,488th position, and Prof. Vo Xuan Vinh from Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics at the 9,528th.

From top left to bottom right: Prof. Dr. Bui Tien Dieu, Prof. Dr. Nguyen Xuan Hung, Asso. Prof. Dr. Le Hoang Son, Prof. Dr. Vo Xuan Vinh, Prof. Dr. Nguyen Dinh Duc. Photos are courtesy of the scientists' universities

Most notably, Prof. Duc, Prof. Hung, and Assoc. Prof. Son have been on the list for three consecutive years of 2019, 2020, and 2021. Prof. Nguyen Dinh Duc is also named in the top 100 world scientists in the field of engineering.

Among the world’s 10,000 most influential scientists in 2021, there are 146 scientists who are working in Vietnam, including 29 Vietnamese.

Several Vietnamese scientists working abroad were also present in the ranking, including Prof. Dam Thanh Son (USA), at the 7,302nd place; Asso. Prof. Bui Quoc Tinh (Japan), at the 9,640th; and Prof. Ngo Duc Tuan (Australia) at the 10,652nd.

The list was compiled by a team of researchers led by professors Jeroen Baas, Kevin Boyack, and John P.A. Ioannidis from Stanford University (USA). They analyzed the Scopus database from 1960 to August 2021 on more than seven million scientists and selected those with the greatest influence.

It is based on six citation metrics, consisting of the influence index in the scientific world; total number of citations; the Hirsch H-index; the Schreiber HM-index; the number of citations of articles published as sole author; and the number of citations of articles as the lead and final authors.

The three most influential scientists in the list are Michael Gratzel of Switzerland’s Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Walter C. Willett of T.H. Chan School of Public Health under the public health school of Harvard University (USA), and Zhong Lin Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology (China).