Czechoslovak Society of Arts & Sciences (SVU)

As an Internet cruiser, sooner or later, you will come across an online “Who’s Who, “known as NNDB, which ostensibly stands for “Notable Names Database”, which prides itself in tracking the whole world and as being an “intelligence aggregator” containing links between people as well as vital statistics, vital statistics, job history, religion, sexual orientation and a biography (including criminal record). …read more

Check also the new section: REMEMBERING

Current biosketches alphabetically:

• Bazant, Zdenek P.
• Borkovec, Vera
• David, Zdenek
• Glos, Jiri
• Hausner, Petr F.
• Heller, Charles O.
• Hermanek Peaslee, Margaret
• Kudej, Blanka
• Kvapil, Radoslav
• Kysucky, Vlado
• Machac, Josef
• Martin, Eugene G.
• Mucha, Frank
• Pacak, Karel
• Raska, Karel
• Rechcigl, Mila
• Rokusek, Cecilia
• Simko, Vlado
• Skalny, Jan P.
• Skamene, Emil
• Slouka, Zdenek | video |
• Tesar, George
• Tkac, Alexander
• Vanicek, Petr
• Vitek, Vaclav
• Wandycz, Piotr S.
• White, Dagmar
• Wlachovsky, Miroslav
• Zuna, Petr

Zdenek Slouka clearly made an imprint on SVU, particularly during his tenure as the first Executive Director of the SVU Research Institute.

Zdenek was born on August 13, 1923 in Brno where he completed Real Gymnasium in 1943. During the last year of the war he participated in the London-connected resistance underground unit G4 in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands (Ceskomoravska vysocina).

In 1945-48, he studied sociology at Masaryk University and concurrently served as editor of Svobodne (Lidove) noviny. In 1948, after the takeover of Czechoslovakia by the communists, he escaped abroad and subsequently emigrated to Australia where he eventually worked as a librarian in the National Mitchell Library in Sydney. After his return to Europe in 1952, Slouka was engaged as a political analyst, attached to the US Army Information Exchange Control Section in Mannheim and Munich. At the same time, he studied at the University of Maryland Overseas Program in Heidelberg. In 1954, he was transferred as a US federal employee to Washington, D.C., serving at the Pentagon. The next year the joined the Radio Free Europe-New York as an international commentator. During this period, Slouka also studied political science at New York University (M.A.,1958) and at Columbia University (Ph.D., 1964).

Slouka started his university teaching career at Adelphi University even before the completion of his doctorate. Upon his graduation, he joined the faculty of Columbia University and served as a co-chairman of its Department of Political Science until 1971, when he returned to Washington, D.C., for one year as a Senior Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

In 1972, while still serving as the Barnette Miller Visiting Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College, Mass., Slouka joined the faculty of Lehigh University at Bethlehem, PA, in the Department of International Relations. He chaired the Department for two terms, became the B.& B.Cohen Distinguished Professor of International Law and Relations, and established at Lehigh a new Institute of International Relations, serving as its Director. Under the Institute, he opened the public Cohen International Lecture Series and between 1988 and 1991 personally arranged for the participation of distinguished lecturers: Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Security Advisor to President Carter; Robert S. McNamara, US Secretary of Defense and later the President of the World Bank; Valéry Giscard d´Estaing, ex-President of France; Lord Peter Carrington, British Foreign Secretary and Secretary General of NATO; and Václav Havel, President of Czechoslovakia.

Among his publications are books: International Custom and the Continental Shelf: Dynamics of Customary Rules of International Law; International Dimensions of American Education; World Education in American Schools; International Dimensions of Engineering; Education and the International Bill of Rights: Lex Incognita. He was also the author of a number of book chapters and articles on the relation of international politics with science and technology and on the changing academic structure of higher education.

After the Velvet Revolution in Prague, Dr. Slouka resigned all of his functions at LehighUniversity, retaining his professorial chair only, in order to devote his energies to the development of the new democratic Czechoslovakia. So as to get closer to the academic conditions in Czechoslovakia, he accepted a full-year appointment as a Senior Fulbright Professor at Charles University for his final year of teaching before retirement, for which Lehigh University granted him a year-long sabbatical as a farewell gift.

Most of his work for Czechs and Slovaks throughout the 1990´s was done with and through SVU. I have known Zdenek for many years, since the early seventies, when he lived in Washington, or it may have been even earlier. I remember him visiting me often in the State Department building and later in Rosslyn, Virginia, where my office was located. This was a beginning of our close and long-lasting friendship.

He became active in SVU, starting as the Society´s Vice President in 1990, a post to which I selected him as the Chairman of the Nominating Committee. Simultaneously, at my recommendation, he assumed the chairmanship of the Planning and Coordinating Council within our newly established SVU Commission for Cooperation with Czechoslovakia.

After a year, he relinquished his post as Vice President in order to accept the appointment as the first Executive Director of the activated SVU Research Institute. In this capacity, he visited Czechoslovakia and its succession states many times in order to expand cooperation between the US and the Czech and Slovak universities. Slouka organized and obtained financial support from US foundations for a five-year series (1992-1997) of extended workshops (each for a number of weeks) for Czech and Slovak institutions and their professors, to assist them in linking their scholarly and scientific work with their counterparts in the US and other advanced countries, and he himself participated in several. I had the pleasure of working with him in these highly successful workshops and
many of them I actually directed. These workshps belong among the best moments of my life.

To do the needed work, Slouka developed excellent contacts in Czechoslovakia, practically with all major institutions of higher learning, including the Academies of Science, and close personal relations with their leaders. Similarly, he was no stranger to the political corridors. In 1991, he worked with Alexander Vondra and Michael Zantovský on the preparation of the 1991 visit by President Václav Havel to the United States.

In an effort to promote closer cooperation between SVU and other American organizations with comparable aims, Slouka became a member of the governing boards of Charter 77 in New York and of the American Czech-and-Slovak Education Fund, as well as of the Center for Independent Journalism in Prague, established by a Foundation of The New York Times with which he cooperated. He also worked closely with the International Research & Exchange Board (IREX) and with the Institute of International Education in New York. In 1992, was awarded a Silver Medal by Charles University and, in the same year, the Josef Hlavka Medal by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.

With such credentials, no wonder that he was easily elected SVU President for the 1992-1994 term and had it not been for his temporarily impaired health following a heart attack and a massive heart surgery, he would have been asked to serve for another term.

At this writing (2007), Zdenek Slouka lives with his wife Blanka in Prague, fully immersed in what was his first work of love – journalism. A member of the Editorial Board of Literarni noviny, he also works closely with Lidove noviny and with the weekly Respekt, writing mostly essays and commentaries.

Miloslav Rechcígl, Jr.

Memoir: Jdi po skryté stopě

Czech TV Video

At the January 2007 SVU Executive Board meeting Mila Rechcigl was named a new SVU Archivist. In many ways, it is a logical and fortuitous choice, as Dr. Rechcigl has been at the cradle of the Society and has worked for it ever since – in various offices and functions, including having been SVU President for sixteen years. He also kept for decades the official Society files which had been deposited at the University of Minnesota’s IHRC archives. In addition, he has been writing a history of SVU, as a part of his memoirs.

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Karel Raška, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., F.C.A.P., was born in Prague in the family of physicians. He attended schools in Prague. In 1956 he started his studies at the Charles University Medical School and graduated with distinction in 1962. After compulsory military service in the Czechoslovak Air Force he entered graduate studies in Biochemistry at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. In 1965 he defended his dissertation “The Mechanism of Biological Activity of 5-azacytidine” and was awarded Ph.D. in Biochemistry.

After receiving a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship he came in 1965 to the Department of Pharmacology at Yale University School of Medicine where he continued studies of anti-cancer nucleoside analogs. In late 1967 he returned to Prague. After August 21, 1968 he emigrated to the U.S.A. and joined the faculty of Rutgers Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J. (now Robert Wood Johnson Medical School). He rose in the ranks to a Professor in 1976. Between 1989 and 1992 he was the Professor and Chairman of the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at New Jersey Medical School in Newark, N.J. Since 1992 he is the Professor and Chairman of the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at Saint Peter’s University Hospital and Director of the Institute of Molecular Diagnostics and Pathology. His research focused on the molecular biology of DNA tumor viruses, clinical immunology and immunopathology. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Pathology in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology with special competence in Immunopathology.

Fourteen students got a Ph.D. degree in his laboratory and he trained dozens of postdoctoral fellows. He is a member of many scientific societies in the U.S.A. and also an honorary member of the Learned Society of the Czech Republic. He has been repeatedly elected to “The Best Doctors in America”. In 2010, On the occasion of the 92nd anniversary of the foundation of the Czechoslovak Republic, president Václav Klaus awarded to him the Medal for Merit (1st class) in the field of science. He published over 250 articles and reports. He is married to Jana Rašková, M.D., Professor and Division Chief at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

Vlado Simko, M.D. Professor of Clinical Medicine at State University New York, Downstate Medical Center at Brooklyn was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia in 1931. He graduated Cum Laude from the Comenius University Medical School in Bratislava in 1956. After medical and research training and after obtaining boards in internal medicine and clinical chemistry he became research investigator and Head, Laboratory Department at the Research Institute for Human Nutrition in Bratislava.

Here he earned a C.Sc. (Ph.D.) for research on metabolic effects of heated fat in food. Subsequently his work in this subject and on metabolic effect of physical exercise on lipid metabolism was published in major medical journals in Bratislava, Prague, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Germany, Hungary and the Soviet Union. These publication activities earned him an invitation to Cornell University in the United States where he became an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Nutrition in 1969. In addition to teaching the graduate students he participated in research on diets for man in space. In 1972 – 1974 he was a clinical fellow in gastroenterology at the Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, NY and then became an associate professor of medicine at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. Since 1982 Dr. Simko is the Chief, Section of Gastroenterology at the Veterans medical center in Brooklyn, NY. He actively joined several Czechoslovak exile organizations, publishing numerous socio-political essays in Slovak democratic exile periodical “Nase snahy” and in other journals.

Dr. Simko published over one hundred original full medical papers in various medical journals, one book chapter and over 250 medical abstracts, translations and letters to the editor. Over seventy socio-political articles were published in exile journals and over sixty popular reports in popular press on nutrition for the general readers. Dr Simko serves on the Board of the American Fund for Czechoslovak Relief and on a committee of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association for reconstruction of the Bohemian Hall in New York City. He is the past Vice President of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences and regularly organizes the biomedical symposia at the SVU World Congresses where he regularly reports on his research. Dr Simko was married to the late Mary T. Simko, M.D., an internist who he acquainted as a medical student. His late son Daniel S. Simko was a recognized American poet who also wrote exile poetry.

Vlado Kysucky joined SVU to serve as the Treasurer, and to pursue research in international finance and economics. He has been active in academia and civil society through a number of appointments in the US and Europe. His research interests and publications cover international capital flows and investments with a focus on emerging markets. In addition, he is dedicated to economic development in the Czech and Slovak republics through several research and business initiatives.

Petr F. Hausner, M.D., Ph.D., was born in Prague in a family of Holocaust survivors. He attended schools in Prague and graduated from Medical School of the Charles University in Prague in 1972. He enrolled in a combined MD/PhD program at the First Department of Medicine of his Medical School. In 1985 he defended his Ph.D. thesis Immunologic Mechanisms in the Prognosis of Melanoma. He dedicated his formative years as Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Laboratory of Clinical Immunology, of the First Medical School of the Charles University in Prague. As his interest turned towards oncology, he joint the research laboratory, of the Oncology Department of the First Medical School, Charles University in Prague, became board certified in Medical Oncology, was promoted to Associate Professor of Oncology and became vice-chair of the department.

With the thaw under Gorbachov, he was allowed to apply for and was awarded a fellowship at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Potter. After years of laboratory research, he entered a clinical fellowship program at NCI/NIH and became a board certified Internist and Medical Oncologist. In 1998 he became a staff oncologist at the Greenebaum Cancer Center and faculty at the Medical School of the University of Maryland in Baltimore. Since 1999, he is Chief of Hematology and Oncology at the Baltimore VA Medical Center.

Dr. Hausner established flow cytometry in the Czech Republic. His laboratory interests center on cancer biology, metastasizing, gap junctional intercellular communications as well as molecular biology and DNA repair, whereas his clinical interests and research revolve around lung cancer, mesothelioma and melanoma. He loves computers, math, statistics and quantitative approaches. He has published 96 papers, over 130 abstracts and contributed to 7 medical books including textbooks.

He is married to Eva Hausnerova, M.D., Ph.D., a cardiologist in private practice in Bethesda and Washington, DC. He has a daughter who is in Law School.

Charles O. Heller was born in Prague and came to the US with his parents in 1949, at the age of 13. The family settled in New Jersey. He earned BS and MS degrees in civil engineering from Oklahoma State University. He worked as an engineer for Douglas Aircraft Company and Bell Telephone Laboratories, before joining the aerospace engineering faculty of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. While at USNA, he earned a Ph.D. in engineering from The Catholic University of America, and he became USNA’s youngest-ever tenured professor.

He left academia for 18 years of life as an entrepreneur. In 1969, he co-founded CADCOM, Inc., a pioneer CAD/CAM software company; he was its President and CEO. In 1979, CADCOM was acquired by ManTech International Corporation, and Charlie became Vice President for Corporate Development of the parent firm. In 1983, he led a management buy-out of a segment of ManTech’s business which became InterCAD Corporation, now a leading producer of electronic publishing systems software, and part of Corel. He was President and CEO of InterCAD until he sold his interest in the company.

He returned to the academic world in 1986, as Director of Industrial Research at the University of Maryland College Park and, in 1990, became Director of UM’s Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship. He built the center into one of the top-ranked such institutions in the nation. After the Velvet Revolution, he was very active in Czechoslovakia, training and educating management teams of newly-privatized firms. At the same time, as a dual citizen of the US and the Czech Republic, he recovered (through restitution and the legal system) some of his family’s property, including a factory and an office building in Prague.

In 2000, Dr. Heller entered the venture capital business as General Partner of Gabriel Venture Partners, a bi-coastal firm investing in early-stage high-technology companies. Today, he is president of Annapolis Capital Group, a seed-stage venture capital firm. Additionally, he teaches entrepreneurship in the Smith School of Business and the Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland. For more than 20 years, he had been a newspaper columnist and freelance writer; today, he continues with this avocation and is writing a memoir.

In 1992, Dr. Heller was named Maryland “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Ernst & Young/INC. magazine/Merrill Lynch. In 1998, he was named by digitalsouth magazine one of “The 50 Most Influential People in Southern Technology.” In 1999, the University of Maryland named him the first-ever Professor of Practice in UM’s history. In 2000, he was awarded the Lohmann Medal, the highest honor awarded to engineering alumni of Oklahoma State University. In 2002, he received the Alumni Achievement Award from The Catholic University of America. In 1998, he was named as one of the world’s “Computer Graphics Pioneers.”

He serves on a number of public, private, and nonprofit boards, including those of: FBR Mutual Funds, Walden University (a for-profit, online, university and subsidiary of Laureate, Inc.), Chesapeake Innovation Center, Emerging Technology Center, the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU), WebTide Technologies (chair), Goozex, Inc., and the Board of Visitors of the School of Civil Engineering at Oklahoma State University.

He is married, has one son and three grandchildren, and resides in Arnold, Maryland, with his wife Susan. He played Division I college basketball, as well as club soccer and volleyball; today, he is an avid golfer, skier, boater, hiker, and writer.

Zdenek David, Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars since February 2002, was born in Blatná, Czech Republic, in 1931. After coming to the United States in September 1947, he studied at the Putney School in Vermont in 1947-48, then at Wesleyan University (politics and philosophy, B.A. 1952), and did graduate work at Harvard (Russian area studies, M.A. 1954; history, Ph.D. 1960). Taught historiography, and Russian and East European history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor from 1960 to 1965. From 1966 to 1974, he served as Slavic bibliographer and history lecturer in Russian and East European history at Princeton University, and from 1974 to 2002 as Librarian at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

His book, Finding the Middle Way: The Utraquists’ Liberal Challenge to Rome and Luther (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press) was published in 2003. A Czech translation is now under preparation. With the late Robert Kann he is coauthor of the Peoples of the Eastern Habsburg Lands, 1526-1918 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984). He compiled the Bibliography of Works in the Philosophy of History for 1978-82 (with Robert Strassfeld), and for 1983-87 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University, 1984-89). His contributions have appeared in Austrian History Yearbook, Bohemia, Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice, Church History, Ceský Casopis historický, Communio Viatorum, EEPS: East European Politics and Societies, East European Jewish Affairs, Folia Historica Bohemica, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Kosmas, Sixteenth Century Journal, Slavic Review, and Slavonic and East European Review. David has completed a book manuscript, Catholic Enlightenment and Lutheran Idealism: Shaping the Political Culture of Central Europe, 1773-1848, and is currently conducting research on the philosophical and religious background of Thomas G. Masaryk’s public activity.

In the early 1990s, David joined David R. Holeton and Vilém Herold in organizing symposia on “The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice,” six of which were held during the World Congresses of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (Prague 1994, Brno l996, Bratislava 1998, Washington 2000, Plzen, 2002, Olomouc 2004), and four additional ones under the auspices of the Philosophy Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (Prague in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006). He co-edited four volumes of the symposia papers that appeared in 1996-2005. In November 2002, he was invited to address the Historical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences on the subject of the Bohemian Reformation. He has served as a Vice-President of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences and as a Member at Large of the Executive Committee of the Czechoslovak Studies Association (formerly, Czechoslovak Studies Conference) for 2004-2006.