sad news for mechanician. Departure of HD Bui, member of french academy of science

Unfortunately, HD Bui, 76, passed away yesterday evening. An elegant, dedicated, very discreet but bright mind, HD Bui made a long career at Ecole Polytechnique and EDF, making important contributions in fracture mechanics and inverse engineering.  Lately, he returned to work on his interesting contributions on the Cheops pyramid and the spiralling internal structure.

He was considered the most prominent vietnamese scientist in France, of 400 000 living there.

I was lucky enough to spend some time with him in Paris in 2008, when I wrote also this curious review a review of a paper by HD Bui found in the internet !!

His main contributions are in his books, that I list from wikipedia in french

• Fracture Mechanics: Inverse Problems and Solutions Springer London, Limited, (ISBN 1-4020-4836-X) ; Springer, (ISBN 1-4020-4837-8) ; Ce livre a été traduit en vietnamien et en russe par Fizmalit (Errata dans [1])
• Inverse Problems in Engineering Mechanics : Iutam Symposium, Tokyo, 1992, by M. Tanaka and H.D. Bui, Springer, (ISBN 3-540-56345-8)
• Mécanique de la rupture fragile, Masson, (ISBN 2-225-48312-4)
• Inverse problems in the mechanics of materials : an introduction,
  CRC Press, Boca Raton, 1994 ; traduction du français, traductions
  japonaise, chinoise, russe et vietnamienne
• Travaux sur la Pyramide de Khéops notamment la découverte de la
  structure de sous-densité en spirale montante dans le sens direct, voir [2]
• Imaging the Cheops Pyramid. Springer, (ISBN 978-94-007-2656-7) (2011)
• Duality, symmetry and symmetry lost in solid mechanics - Selected works of H.D. Bui - (Ed. Xanthippi Markenscoff et Alain Ehrlacher) à l'occasion d'un colloque les 4-5 juillet 2011 à Paris (École des Mines ParisTech) - Presse des Ponts

 
We will certainly miss his style, his constant smile, his delicate touch and voice.