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Jaroslav Folta in Memoriam
Jaroslav Folta in Memoriam
Jaroslav Folta in Memoriam
Jaroslav Folta, a mathematician and science historian, who had been in charge of
the department of history science and technology at the National Technical
Museum in Prague, died prematurely and unexpectedly on March 25, 2011, shortly
before his 78th birthday.
I have known Jarda, as he liked to be called, for a long time, more than forty years,
in fact. In the mid sixties, I was then employed by NIH and, apart from my official
responsibilities, I became keenly interested in history of science, especially
Czechoslovak science and that's how I came in contact with Dr. Jaroslav Folta who
was an officer of the Czechoslovak Society for History of Science and Technology.
He was very kind in sending me various materials about which I then periodically
wrote abstracts for the periodical Isis. As a “reward“ I sent him a copy of the SVU
publication, The Czechoslovak Contribution to World Culture (1964) which I edited.
We then lost contact with each other for some twenty years.
On my first trip to Czechoslovakia after the Velvet Revolution in 1990, I made sure
to get in contact with Dr. Folta. This was fortuitous, as Jarda subsequently helped
me a lot in making contacts with various Czech and Slovak scientists and
institutions. I remember how proudly he took me to their Society's small office to
show me our “precious” book that I sent him many years before and which they
kept safely during the Communist era under lock and key.
Dr. Folta was instrumental in getting me in touch with the Czechoslovak Council of
the Scientific Societies, especially Prof. Jaroslav Valenta, with whose help we then
organized the first SVU Congress in Prague in 1992 and another in 1994. Dr. Folta
played a pivotal role in both Congresses. It was also he who arranged a trip for me
and my family to Slovakia where I met leading scientists associated with the
Slovak Academy of Sciences.
Jarda was not a headline man. He prefersed to stay behind the scenes and do all
the work, while others got the credit. Albeit almost invisible to others, in my mind,
he was the most active and most dependable person I have ever met on the
territory of Czechoslovakia. I was glad I could count him among my closest friends.
As for his personal side, Jaroslav Folta was born in Plzeň on April 2, 1933. He spent
his childhood in western Bohemia and completed gymnasium in Plzeň in 1951. He
studied mathematics at Charles University, receiving his RNDr. degree in 1955. In
1961, he defended his dissertation at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at
Charles University. which awarded him CSc. diploma.
He had been an active member of the Czechoslovak Society for History and
Technology and in 1989 became its Vice President. His research work had focused
in the area of history of mathematics and history of science and technology, in
general. He coordinated a large project on History of Technology in Czech Lands in
the 20th Century, two volumes covering the period 1918–1945 (1995) and three
volumes the period of 1945–1992 (2003), for which they received the prize “Gloria
Musaealis” (2003). Subsequently his department received a research grant to
write a comparative history of domestic and foreign technology for years 2004–
2008.
He has been a member of editorial boards of the Czech journal Dějiny věd a
techniky (History of Science & Technology) and the Austrian Schriftenreihe
Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und Technik. He renewed the series Práce z
dějin techniky a exaktních věd (Contributions to History of Technology and Exact
Sciences), published since 2000 and Acta historiae rerum naturalium necnon
technicarum, published since 1997.