History professor, People's Teacher Ha Van Tan was born in 1937 in Tien Dien, Nghi Xuan, Ha Tinh in a Confucianist family.

He left Phan Dinh Phung High School in Ha Tinh province in 1954 and studied at the literature and history faculty of the Hanoi Teachers Training College from 1955-1957. Ha Van Tan was the second best graduate of the faculty.

After graduating from the college, he worked as an assistant to Professor Dao Duy Anh. His initial well-known work was notes for a geography book by Nguyen Trai and Nguyen Thien Tung, published by the History Institute in 1960. It is a historical geography book on Vietnam from the ancient time to the 15^th century. The original text includes 38 pages but the notes are four times thicker with 115 pages.

Professor Ha Van Tan has mastered Japanese, Russia, German, English and French languages.

Over 40 years of teaching at the history faculty of Hanoi University and many colleges throughout the country, Professor Tan has created hundreds of studies of history, archaeology and Buddhism. He has translated and provided notes for many famous works on epitaphs, poetry and literature, even poems of the Tang dynasty. He has made great contributions to training a series of young history researchers with a big system of knowledge of methodology.

By combining his surveys and detailed research work with his broad knowledge and methodology, the professor has shed light on many issues of prehistoric Vietnam and of the ancient Viet civilisation. He has discovered and subdivided three ancient cultures into Song Vi, Bau Tro and Ha Giang. The professor's painstaking research results have been made public in the textbook of Vietnam History and Archaeology. Many of his research results have been announced abroad and quoted by foreign archaeologists.

Apart from studying history and archaeology, Professor Ha Van Tan studies natural and social sciences seriously such as mathematics, information theory, statistics, probability, philosophy and history of world civilisations.

By NGUYEN NGOC HAI