František Moravec awarded the G. J. Mendel Medal

"I have been fascinated by biology since the fifth grade of primary school, and when the first Czech edition of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published in 1953, I immediately bought it," said František Moravec, currently the only emeritus scientist at the Biology Centre, upon receiving the award. Since 1964 he worked at the Institute of Parasitology of the then Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and became a world authority on parasitic nematodes. His work on nematode developmental cycles is fundamental to understanding the biology of parasitic nematodes.

He contributed to the worldwide reputation of Czech fish parasitology, including the organization of the first international symposium on fish parasites in 1983, when experts from both sides of the Iron Curtain met for the first time in history. He is the author of nine books and more than seven hundred scientific articles - mostly in impacted journals. In the vast majority of them he is the main or even the only author.