Henri Hogbe Nlend was a Professor at the University of Yaoundé, and at the University of Bordeaux. In 1976 at a meeting of the International Mathematical Union it was decided to form an African Mathematical Union. Hogbe Nlend was elected as its first president, a post he held until 1986. The AMU was partially funded from another organization in Paris, which was also chaired by Hogbe Nlend. It is said that he was good at raising funds and that meetings were held twice a year. Hogbe Nlend was a candidate in the presidential election held on 12 October 1997, which was boycotted by the major opposition parties, and placed second, although he received only 2.9% of the vote. The winning candidate, incumbent President Paul Biya, appointed Nlend as Minister of Scientific and Technical Research after the election. His textbook on the theory of duality topology-bornology and its use in functional analysis has been described as a classic. Henri Hogbe Nlend is a member of the Historical Cameroon Party, the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon and leader of one faction of this party. Hogbe Nlend fell out with Augustin Frederic Kodock, the Secretary-General of another UPC faction, in 2002. At the time of the July 2007 parliamentary election, Charly Gabriel Mbock, member of Hogbe Nlend UPC faction and outgoing UPC parliamentary deputy, resigned from the UPC and joined a new party, National Movement Party, vowing to carry on the struggle for which UPC has stood for, but this was disbanded when differences were resolved a year later, in a reconciliation meeting with the Hogbe Nlend UPC faction.. In reality, the 1990 Law to constitute an entity for legalisation as a political party in Cameroon does not include this requirement.
Selected bibliography
Théorie des bornologies et applications, Lecture Notes in Mathematics, Vol. 213. Springer-Verlag, Berlin-New York, 1971. v+168 pp.
Bornologies and functional analysis, Translated from the French by V. B. Moscatelli. North-Holland Mathematics Studies, Vol. 26. Notas de Matemática, No. 62. North-Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam-New York-Oxford, 1977. xii+144 pp.
