In 1964 at a scientific conference in Beijing, a report titled “The Fish in the Red River System” by young Vietnamese scientist Mai Dinh Yen was presented and immediately attracted the attention of many prestigious scientists around the world. At that time he was just 31. From this report, for the first time, scientists around the world learned about and had the evidence of the number of fish species in the Red River system of Vietnam and their value.
After this achievement, Yen began engaging in deeper research on the environment and ecology, a new and challenging field at that time. Doing research and studying by himself, particularly from the source of advanced scientific information in the world, he started discovering many interesting things about the environment and ecology in Vietnam. Since then he has continued to send new scientific reports to international conferences and has won the high appreciation of the public.
 

Prof. Yen said that in the 1950s and 1960s Vietnam had not the environmental sector while in western countries there was great investment in it. As an ecology lecturer at Hanoi University (now Vietnam National University, Hanoi) he was soon well aware of the role and importance of environmental factors impacting all aspects of life, the economy and society. He had a burning desire that Vietnam should have a place to train people in this subject. With this in mind he mapped out a detailed plan to submit to the university and the Ministry of Education. With compelling scientific arguments, his plan won the approval of the Ministry of Education that allowed Hanoi University to establish the Environment Department. Since then, besides being in charge of vertebrate studies at the Biology Department, he was assigned by the university to teach the first classes of students in the Environment Department.
From 1963 to 1975, to encourage the movement of the anti-US resistance war in the South, at the universities in the socialist North, there was an enthusiastic movement of learning together with practicing and applying knowledge obtained from books to practical production to serve life. So, apart from teaching, Yen, together with his students and colleagues, went to the countryside and mountainous areas to research, identify and classify rare and precious species of animals of Vietnam to list them in the Red Book.
In 1968, his textbook “Animal Ecology” was considered a bedside book for students of the Ecological Department at Hanoi University. The textbook was not only “the brainchild” of his scientific research and but also started a movement of Vietnamese scientists approaching new scientific knowledge outside the Soviet Union and China.
In his research career Yen has published many great scientific projects, which have won praise from scientific circles. These publications include “General Ichthyology”, “Basis of Environmental Science”, “Ecological Basis”, “Basis of Fish Physiology and Ecology”, “Identification of Vietnamese Freshwater Fish” and “Life of Animals”. These projects have greatly contributed to the agricultural, forestry and fishery production and ecological protection in Vietnam.
For his unceasing contributions to the ecological and environmental sector, in 2006 Mai Dinh Yen won the Ho Chi Minh Award for Science and Technology, the highest prize for those who have rendered great services to Vietnam’s science.
Having been attached to the university for dozens of years, the awards for Prof. Yen are not only certificates of merit and noble titles but also include the love and respect of generations of students, friends and colleagues. Those are the most beautiful and brightest “medals” attached to the lapel of a teacher, a true scientist like Professor Mai Dinh Yen, a leading ichthyologist in Vietnam.