Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences
The Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (Czech: Československá akademie věd, Slovak: Česko-slovenská akadémia vied) was established in 1953 to be the scientific center for Czechoslovakia. It was succeeded by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (Akademie věd České republiky) and Slovak Academy of Sciences (Slovenská akadémia vied) in 1992.
History
The Royal Czech Society of Sciences, which encompassed both the humanities and the natural sciences, was established in the Czech Crown lands in 1784. After the totalitarian Communist regime came to power in Czechoslovakia in 1948, all scientific, non-university institutions and learned societies were dissolved and, in their place, the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences was founded by Act No. 52/1952. It comprised both a complex of research institutes and a learned society. Slovak Academy of Sciences established in 1942 and re-established in 1953 was a formal part of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences since 1960 to 1992. The Academy was subjected to heavy ideological pressure until the fall of the Communist regime in 1989. In 1992, the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic was established by Act No. 283/1992.
Past presidents
- Zdeněk Nejedlý (1952-1962)
- František Šorm (1962-1965; 1965-1969)
- Jaroslav Kožešník (1969-1970, 1970-1977, 1977-1980)
- Bohumil Kvasil (1981-1985)
- Josef Říman (1985-1989)
- Otto Wichterle (1990-1992)
Academy notables
- Jaroslav Heyrovský, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1959
- Otto Wichterle for his invention of soft contact lenses. Wichterle was also the first President of the Academy after the revival of democracy in the Czech Republic.
- astrophysicist Jiří Grygar
- mathematicians Eduard Čech and Otakar Borůvka
- chemist Antonín Holý
- Polish mathematician Czeslaw Olech
- cannabis researcher and chemist Lumír Ondřej Hanuš
- biomedical scientist Ján Vilček