Hồ Văn Nhựt (15 July 1905 – 13 March 1986) was a medical doctor who founded the Southern branch of Red Cross of Vietnam and a South Vietnamese opposition leader during and after the period of resistance against colonialism.

Nhựt was born on 15 July 1905 in the village of Tân Qui Đông, Sa Đéc province, to a traditional family of scholars and mandarins (nho giáo) in the Southern part of Vietnam, which was then a French colony known as 'French Cochinchina.’ He obtained his father's permission to travel to Saigon to study at the French-founded Collège Chasseloup-Laubat in the section for Vietnamese children or "quartier indigène.

His thesis supervised by Professor Louis-Jacques Tanon (1876–1969), an eminent expert in hygiene and tropical medicine,[2] was dedicated to the study of malaria and approaches to controlling this disease in Saigon.

[4] He practised medicine in France for some time to gain further experience before returning to Vietnam in 1938 where he founded the first South Vietnamese maternity clinic in Phú Nhuận on the outskirts of Saigon.

With his friend and colleague Hồ Tá Khanh, he founded the weekly newspaper Văn Lang in Saigon in 1939,[5] which had the support and contributions from South-Vietnamese intellectuals trained in France.

[12] In 1945, Nhựt was Committee member and Head of Propaganda of the Thanh Niên Tiền Phong (the Vanguard Youth),[7][13][14] a major South Vietnamese patriotic and humanitarian coalition, which later joined the Việt Minh and embarked on the August Revolution against colonial rule.

[15] In 1947 in support of the appeal by the Vietnamese Government of Resistance to France, he voluntarily signed the Manifesto of the Intellectuals of Saigon-Cholon (Manifeste des Intellectuels de Saigon–Cholon or Tuyên Ngôn của Trí Thức Sài Gòn-Chợ Lớn).

Phan Khắc Sửu was appointed Head of State by the Council and he subsequently asked Dr Nhựt to assume the role of Prime Minister.