The History of Science and Technology in the Czech Republic and the Founding of the Journal
The establishment of the journal History of Science and Technology (DVT) in 1968 was the result of a long journey of gradual institutionalisation of the field in post-war Czechoslovakia. This development followed the key pre-war initiatives of the historian of exact sciences Quido Vetter (1881–1960) and the historian of biology and philosopher Emanuel Rádl (1873–1942).
Vetter's establishment of the field culminated in organization and chairmanship of the Fourth International Congress for the History of the Real Sciences in Prague (1937). The Free Association for the History of the Real Sciences founded by him and the subsequent commissions (working under various names) at the Masaryk Academy of Labour can be considered the first precursors of today's Society for the History of Science and Technology. The post-war efforts to renew and integrate activities led in 1951 to the establishment of the Commission for the History of Natural Sciences and Technology at the Czechoslovak-Soviet Institute, later transferred to the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (CSAS) in 1952. The Commission was headed by Jan Kořan (1905–1986), a historian of mining and metallurgy, and was tasked with coordinating the work of historians of science from various departments of natural science and engineering.
A year later, the Commission for the Study of the Life and Work of J. E. Purkyně, headed by Bohumil Němec (1873–1966), was founded at the Biological Section and expanded its scope into the history of biological and medical sciences. Under Kořan's editorial leadership, the Proceedings for the History of Natural Sciences and Technology began to be published in 1954 as a yearbook with an annual bibliography – the first periodical in the field and the first direct predecessor of the journal.
The seminar for methodology and history of natural and exact sciences founded by Rádl at the Prague Faculty of Science was reestablished after the war as the Institute for General Natural Science and History of Natural Sciences under the leadership of Otakar Matoušek (1899–1994). Although Matoušek was relieved of his leadership for political reasons in 1950 and the Institute was abolished as a university institute, it survived for the next few years in the limited form of a seminar under the protection of the mathematician and then rector Miroslav Katětov (1918–1995). A circle of young assistant professors found employment here, including Irena Seidlerová (*1926), Luboš Nový (1929–2017), Josef Smolka (1929–2020), Zdeněk Horský (1929–1988) and Mikuláš Teich (1918–2018). Together, they formulated and developed a systematic project on the history of exact sciences in the Czech lands, which enabled the group to move to the Institute of History of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1956 and create a separate Department for the History of Natural Sciences and Technology, which later took over other major initiatives. The existing commissions were integrated in 1959 into a single Commission for the History of Natural, Medical and Technical Sciences of the CSAS, formally chaired by B. Němec. Subsequent efforts to find better institutional support finally led to the founding of the Czechoslovak Society for the History of Science and Technology at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, which was officially established on 9 April 1965 and whose first chairman was M. Katětov.
The aforementioned department at the Institute of History began printing the booklet Reports of the Commission for the History of Natural, Medical and Technical Sciences (with J. Smolka as chairman of the editorial board) from 1959, which continued as the Reports of the Czechoslovak Society for the History of Science and Technology (Z. Horský, chairman of the editorial board) from 1965; this is another direct predecessor of the DVT. These early volumes were non-periodical internal publications, which were not for sale to general public. The creation of a proper specialised periodical publication was therefore a permanent priority. The main goal, announced at the founding of the Society in 1965, was to create a more flexible, readable and up-to-date form of a regular professional journal surpassing other contemporary scientific societies.
However, the road to this goal was not easy and the establishment of the journal was associated with a number of bureaucratic difficulties, hardly imaginable today, both at the Ministry of Culture and at the Presidium of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, where the Director of the Institute of History, Josef Macek, eventually helped significantly. In the last phase, for example, it was necessary to solve the obstacle posed by the acute shortage of printing paper, which was subject to strict state supervision.
The Presidium eventually gave final permission to publish the journal as a replacement for the aforementioned yearbook, and the first edition of DVT saw the light of day in 1968 as an indirect result of the Prague Spring. As a consequence of the difficulties mentioned above, the entire first year was compiled from contributions submitted during 1966. Luboš Nový became the first and long-time managing editor. The following Communist normalisation purges hit the Institute of History and its Department for the History of Science hard in its current form: as a result of the persecution, a number of key staff members (Z. Horský, I. Seidlerová, J. Smolka, M. Teich) were forced to leave the Institute and the journal's editorial board. However, the journal survived as a specialised professional journal for the history of science and technology with a quarterly periodicity.
The integration of disciplines related to the history of science and technology and the new publishing challenges were repeatedly addressed throughout the history of DVT. After Luboš Nový, Petr Vágner (1991–1994), followed by Jan Janko (1995–2001), Pavel Drábek (2001–2009), and Tomáš Hermann (2010) became the leading editors of DVT. The publisher of the journal has been the Czechoslovak Society for the History of Science and Technology since 1993, but editorial facilities and other institutional support have also been provided by the relevant professional institutes of the CAS or the Charles University, depending on the location of the Society or the editorial office.
Predecessors of the DVT Journal
- Sborník pro dějiny přírodních věd a techniky; yearbook published by the Commission for the History of Natural Sciences and Technology of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (1–4, 1954–1958), Commission for the History of Natural, Medical and Technical Sciences of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (5–8, 1959–1963) and Institute of History of CSAS (9–12, 1964–1967).
- Zprávy Komise pro dějiny přírodních, lékařských a technických věd ČSAV; published by the Historical Section of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, no. 1–20, 1959–1965, as not-for-sale non-periodical for internal use.
- Zprávy Československé společnosti pro dějiny věd a techniky při ČSAV; published in cooperation with the Department for the History of Natural Sciences and Technology of the Institute of History of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, no. 1(21) – 14–15 (34–35), 1965–1969, as not-for-sale non-periodical for internal use.
Tomáš Hermann
Additional Sources
- Dějiny věd a techniky 38, 2005, no. 1 = thematic issue on the anniversary of the founding of the Czech Society for the History of Science and Technology, cf. here P. Drábek and J. Folta ("Forty Years of the Society for the History of Science and Technology"), L. Nový ("History of Science and Technology between Science and Popularization"), J. Smolka ("The Founding of the Czechoslovak Society for the History of Science and Technology"), M. Hořejš ("Jan Kořan, a prominent researcher and organizer of the history of science and technology").
- T. Hermann, "The work of Josef Smolka, historian of exact sciences (1929–2020). Contribution to the formation of the field and annotated bibliography", Dějiny věd a techniky 53, 2020, no. 1–2, pp. 82–113.
- „Odešli naši dva kolegové a dřívější vedoucí redaktoři DVT Jan Janko (1943–2021) a Petr Vágner (1957–2021)“, Dějiny věd a techniky 54, 2021, č. 1, s. 73–74.
- I. Jakubec – M. Efmertová, „Historiografie vědy a techniky v Čechách a možnosti mezinárodní spolupráce“, Cahiers du CEFRES. N˚ 21, Historie vědy a techniky. Historiografie vědy a techniky, komparace vývoje oboru ve Francii a v České republice (ed. M. Efmertová). URL : http://www.cefres.cz/pdf/c21/Jakubec_Efmertova_2001_veda_technika_Cechy.pdf
