Nguyen Dinh Dang, a self-taught painter from Vietnam who has two doctoral degrees in the sciences, will present two lectures next month at The University of Texas at Dallas on topics as dissimilar as his dual careers.
In the first lecture, to be held at 3 p.m. on Friday, June 8, Dang will discuss the state of higher education in Vietnam. The second session, a slide lecture scheduled for 7:30 p.m. that same day, will focus on Dang’s decision to become a painter in addition to his career as a physicist.
Both lectures will be held in the McDermott Library Auditorium, room 2.410, on the UTD campus, 2601 North Floyd Road, Richardson. The evening lecture will be followed by a reception in the library’s McDermott Suite. Both lectures and the reception are open to the public free of charge.
“I know and admire Dang as a fellow physicist and as an artist,” said Dr. Da Hsuan Feng, vice president for research and graduate education and professor of physics at UTD. “Given his wide range of interests and talents, he certainly is qualified for the title Renaissance man.”
Dang was born in Hanoi and attended graduate school in Moscow. He holds a master’s degree and two doctoral degrees – one in nuclear theory, the other in physics and mathematics sciences – from Moscow State University.
He began painting in oil colors as a young teen in Vietnam and pursued art as a parallel interest to his studies in mathematics and science, in which he excelled. His dual talents in the arts and sciences prompted him to pursue university studies abroad, which the Vietnamese government approved.
Studying science in the former Soviet Union provided Dang access to world-class art museums, such as the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum and the Hermitage. His exposure to works of great masters broadened his interest in, and fueled his passion for, painting. However, he resisted an art professor’s suggestion that he abandon physics and join her class in order to become “a great painter.”
That decision resulted in the dual career Dang enjoys today – his “day job” as a physicist and evening and weekends devoted to his painting. For the past decade, he has spent most of his time abroad, fulfilling scientific research contracts or fellowships. During that time, he and his wife and son have lived in Germany, Italy and, since 1994, Japan.
Dang occasionally shows his works in one-man and group exhibitions, most of which have been in Hanoi and Moscow. He has a one-man exhibition scheduled for this fall in Japan. His works are also found in private collections in a number of countries, including the United States.
Additional information about Dang and an on-line exhibition of his paintings are available on his web site, http://melon.riken.go.jp/~dang/page1.html. For further information about his lectures at UTD, please call the university at 972-883-4566.
About UTD
The University of Texas at Dallas, located at the convergence of Richardson, Plano and Dallas in the heart of the complex of major multinational technology corporations known as the Telecom Corridor, enrolls approximately 6,500 undergraduate and 4,500 graduate students. The school’s freshman class traditionally stands at the forefront of Texas state universities in terms of average SAT scores. The university offers a broad assortment of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs. For additional information about UTD, please visit its web site at www.utdallas.edu.