Vũ Văn Mẫu


Vũ Văn Mẫu was the last Prime Minister of South Vietnam and served under President Dương Văn Minh leadership.

Biography

Vũ Văn Mẫu was born in 1914 in Hanoi, Indochina. He earned a doctorate in law from the University of Paris and practiced law in Hanoi. After Vietnam’s partition in 1954, he moved to Saigon with his family and joined the Faculty of Law at the University of Saigon, where he became the Dean of the Faculty. He was recognized as an expert in civil and historical law. After several years as a professor he then became a local Saigon judge, rising through the ranks to become Judge of the Saigon Superior Court. During his legal career and even during retirement and exile, he authored a number of books, including one entitled Vietnamese Civil Law.

Political career

Mẫu was South Vietnam's ambassador to the United Kingdom, Belgium and the Netherlands in the 1960s.
In the early 1970s, he was elected Senator of the Republic where he became a prominent national politician. In 1975, he became Prime Minister of the Republic of Vietnam under President Dương Văn Minh.

Exile

Vũ Văn Mẫu moved to Paris in 1988, where he died on 20 August 1998, at age 84.