The 2009 honorees are Prof. Nguyễn Quang Hồng and Mr. Phạm Thế Khang.

This prize is awarded to Professor Nguyễn Quang Hồng, the former vice-president of the Institute for Research into Hán and Nôm (Viện Nghiên cứu Hán Nôm ). Prof. Hồng, is honored for his distinguished Nôm scholarship, including his monumental Nôm dictionary (Tự Điển Chữ Nôm, Hà Nội, 2006) for which he was editor-in-chief, his Khái luận văn tự học chữ Nôm, his profound monograph on the old writing system (Tp HCM, 2008), and especially his twelve years of effort, from 1994-2006, to transform nearly 10,000 Nôm words into Unicode and ISO 10646 International Standard.

Mr. Phạm Thế Khang, Director of the National Library of Vietnam, is honored for his visionary leadership in the creation of the first digital library of Vietnam’s ancient texts, the National Library’s 4000-text Hán-Nôm Collection, thereby opening Vietnam's Nôm past to Vietnamese and to the world. His leadership as a modern library scientist has brought world-wide recognition to Vietnam’s ancient cultural heritage.