As many as 2,100 top class Vietnamese students and young researchers will receive Odon Vallet scholarships from the scientific organisation, Rencontres du Vietnam.

Prof. Odon Vallet, the sponsor of the scholarship programme, and Vietnamese French Prof. Tran Thanh Van, President of the organisation, will visit Vietnam from August 25 to September 9 to present scholarships worth a total of more than 6 billion VND.

French-born Vallet, a doctor of law and a religious history professor at Paris-based Sorbonne University, set up the programme for high-achieving Vietnamese students in 2001.

The funding is drawn from the professor’s personal inheritance handed down by his father, once a poor labourer who made his fortune from insurance. Part of the conditions on the will was that his son uses the money to help poor students, according to the programme's website.

From 2001 and 2006, a total of 8,460 outstanding young Vietnamese students received Odon Vallet scholarships.

The scholarship programme is part of Rencontres du Vietnam (Meeting Vietnam), an initiative set up by Prof. Van and his Vietnamese colleague, Prof. Nguyen Van Hieu, former director of the Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology.

The first Meeting Vietnam symposium took place in 1993, attracting the participation of hundreds of world renowned physicist s, including Nobel Prize laureate Jack Steinberger.

Between 1995 and 2006, five "Meeting Vietnam" symposiums took place in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, attracting the participation of Nobel Prize physicists, such as Norman Ramsey (the US), Georges Charpak (France), Jerome Friedman (the US), James Cronin (the US) and Klaus Von Klitzing (Germany).

Along with the symposiums, various training courses on physics are held every year for post graduate, doctorate and post doctorate degrees. (VNA)