XI. The VIZE 97 Prize goes to a Czech laureate
This year’s VIZE 97 Prize, which the Dagmar and Václav Havel Foundation annually presents on Václav Havel’s birthday, goes to RNDr. Václav Cílek, CSc, who will thus have been the third Czech laureate in the 11-year history of the Prize.
Václav Cílek, who will receive the VIZE 97 Prize from Dagmar and Václav Havel in Prague Crossroads on 5 October 2009, is a distinguished Czech geologist, climatologist, writer, philosopher, translator and populariser of science. At the moment, he is the Director of the Institute of Geology at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The annually awarded VIZE 97 Prize, which consists of a diploma and a commemorative artefact in the form of the crutch of Saint Vojtěch – has been presented to people whose work has significantly widened human horizons, pointed out less known phenomena and associations, helped embody the results of science in the general culture, and extended the alternatives of human view of the world, universe and basic questions of being.
Laureates of the Dagmar and Václav Havel VIZE 97 Prize:
Václav Cílek
Václav Cílek
RNDr. Václav Cílek, CSc. was born on 5 November 1955 in Brno-Židenice. During his secondary school studies he also attended a school in Tanzania. Then he completed his studies at the Vocational High School of Mining in Příbram and graduated in Geology from the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the Charles University, Prague.
From 1980 to 1990 he worked in the Mining Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. From 1990 he was employed in the Institute of Geology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and in 1994-2001 he was a part-timer at the Centre of Theoretical Studies. Since 2004 he has been Director of the Institute of Geology, Czech Academy of Sciences.
While his work is primarily focused on popularising science and on climate and environmental changes, evolution of Czech landscape and interactions between nature and civilisation, his books also include elements of literature, religious studies, philosophy, theology, plastic arts or music of all genres.