Nguyễn Bình 阮平

I am a member of the COSMOS Collaboration, studying the formation and evolution of galaxies in the COSMOS legacy field which is situated on the equatorial sky (most precisely the Sextans constellation). My specific niche concerns massive, early Universe galaxies (around the mass of the Milky Way but existing around 11.5 billion years ago) that are quiescent, i.e. having ceased star formation altogether. With the help of my current advisor, Prof. Arianna Long (University of Washington), I compiled a sample of early-Universe massive quiescent galaxies in the COSMOS field, nicknamed SÔNG after the Vietnamese word for rivers. A false-color image of one of the SÔNG galaxies can be found at the bottom of this page.

Most of my works before graduate school also concern galaxies. Between 2021 and 2022, I worked with Prof. Gurtina Besla (University of Arizona) to understand how the dark matter mass profiles and kinematics of a kind of minuscule galaxy called ultra-faint dwarfs (UFDs) evolved across cosmic time, using high-resolution, zoom-in cosmological simulations. In Summer 2022, I interned with the FOGGIE team at the Space Telescope Science Institute to study the stellar halo of a Milky Way-mass galaxy in cosmological simulations.

I have been a writer since I was at least five years old. Between the ages of ten and twelve, long before my first exposure to professional astronomy, I published a three-novel series called Cuộc chiến với hành tinh Fantom [Battle with the Fantom Planet], which imagined a group of American teenagers dealing with an alien invasion from the eponymous planet. I am quite embarrassed by it now, but it's part of my life, and in my interviews at the time (examples here and here), I said I wanted to use the royalties to buy telescopes "to study the universe." :)

These days, my interests are deeper and more varied. I publish some poetry, write some critical essays here and there, but am probably better known (for the time being) for my translation of the medieval Vietnamese novel-in-verse Truyện Kiều [The Tale of Kiều] into English, published in 2025 by Major Books. An English interview on my translation process and philosophy can be found here.

Treasury of Vietnamese Folk Tales. Co-translated with Lan Vo from the Vietnamese by Nguyễn Đổng Chi. London: Major Books. 2026.
The Tale of Kieu: A New Cry of Heart-Rending Pain. Translated from the Vietnamese by Nguyễn Du. London: Major Books. 2025.

"Stars Over People: Patricio Guzmán’s Nostalgia from the Light”. Ultra Dogme. Jun 2026. Online.
"The Windy Moors of Đà Lạt". The London Magazine. Feb 2026. Online.
""America’s Literary Giant." On the Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe in Vietnam". Literary Hub. Oct 2024. Online.

"Dover". The Common. Apr 2024. 203.
"Rest". Puerto del Sol. Dec 2023. 82.
"Two of the Graves by the Highway" & "Uncle". The Common. May 2023. Online.
"First Lagrangian Point". Euphony Journal. Dec 2021. Online.