Professor Václav Dvořák: The field of computer technology has undergone revolutionary advances and I am glad to have been there

His career lasting more than fifty years, Václav Dvořák became immersed in computer technology already at a time when there was only one computer at BUT; he was involved in the development of the first operating memories, greatly contributed to the fact computer science became an independent field of study at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and promoted development of the Institute of Computer Systems at the Faculty of Information Technology. He is also the author of more than two hundred publications and four patents. In November, Professor Václav Dvořák received a gold medal from the Rector of BUT, Petr Štěpánek, for his contribution to the development of computer technology and international co-operation within FIT.

At the beginning of the 60's, a new field of study - computer technology and informatics - started to gain prominence on a global scale. At BUT, the Faculty of Energy was divided into the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. Václav Dvořák, then a second-year student, chose the study of weak current and the newly opened specialisation - automatic computers. This pretty much sums up the beginning of his academic career.

As a research assistant, Václav Dvořák gained his first practical skills in digital electronics under the tuition of Prof. Jan Blatný, who was then a leading expert in the field. "Computers were then available only at a very few research centres. There was a brand-new LGP-30 at the faculty - a small mainframe computer, but we were mostly just looking at it. This, however, didn't stop us from learning our first programming languages. We were a group of about twenty people who had the same specialisation and enthusiasm for the new field of study. Those were very exciting times," Václav Dvořák recalls.

In 1963, he was temporarily transferred to the Research Institute of Mathematical Machines in Prague, where he participated in the development of the first Czechoslovak operating memories. "We created them based on ferrite cores. We had to build all supporting circuits and then test and them and put them into use. And so I sometimes spent my whole working day sitting by the oscilloscope, looking out for impulses. IT professionals probably don't do that anymore," Václav Dvořák laughs.

Václav Dvořák then returned to Brno in 1968 to defend his doctoral thesis. He, however, didn't stay for long. In autumn, he was supposed to go to a long-term research scholarship in Canada, accompanied by his new bride, a ballet dancer at the Brno National Theatre. The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia almost made that impossible. "We were afraid that we wouldn't be able to get there, but we managed to leave in the end - although not from Prague, but from Vienna," Václav Dvořák recalls.

While Czechoslovakia began to close to the world, living in Canada opened all the doors for Václav Dvořák. "It was a wonderful time. I could do my research, visit conferences, make new contacts and gain experience. It was difficult to decide whether to return to the normalisation-era Czechoslovakia after two and a half years. But we didn't want our broader family to suffer in Czechoslovakia," he says.

Together with his wife and their first-born son, Václav Dvořák returned to Brno and lost contact with research carried out beyond the closed borders for a while. Science was subject to State assignments in those times and research was conducted as a secondary economic activity. He was trying to publish his papers both at home and abroad, but the trips to the western conferences were, in his words, a nuisance. "It was very demanding because of all the bureaucracy, especially for a person who was not a member of the Communist Party. It was necessary to obtain the consent of three levels of the Communist Party committees and it was often impossible to attend the conference due to the lengthy procedure. Sometimes, a trip to a conference would be cancelled without any explanation," he describes.

In the normalisation era, he ultimately managed to travel with his family as an expert of Polytechna company for a longer stay in Malta and Libya. In 1982, the American company AMF Electronics purchased his programme for analysis of the delay lines and Václav Dvořák was thus allowed to go to the United States for six weeks to introduce the programme. Shortly before the fall of the Iron Curtain, he returned to Canada for two years, after which he worked in New Zealand, Australia and Tenerife - Spain. In total, he worked at universities abroad for more than eight years. Václav Dvořák benefited from his contacts abroad especially after 1989 - he managed to establish a co-operation with numerous universities and get the faculty involved in several EU projects aimed at modernisation of teaching.

"Contact with foreign countries has always been very important for me. I started studying at a time when new knowledge could only be gained abroad, while working with the latest computer technology. The field of information technology was developing extremely quickly and to keep up, it was necessary to follow what was happening around the globe. This, I think, holds true even now, when we have access to state-of-the-art technologies also in the Czech Republic," he says.

Who is Václav Dvořák

After the Velvet Revolution, Václav Dvořák became the head of the Institute of Computer Science and Technology (which was then at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology) and held this post for six years. He contributed to innovation of teaching and the fact that computer science could be studied as an independent specialisation from the first year of studies. For three years, he also headed the Department of Computer Systems at the Faculty of Information Technology. As a university teacher, he devised, introduced and taught around twenty courses. Students have always appreciated his efforts to provide simple and comprehensible explanations illustrated by many examples.

He retired three years ago, after more than 50 years in science and teaching. But, as he says, his life is not boring at all. "I enjoy spending time with the grandchildren and hiking and I have more time for reading. However, I still meet my colleagues at the FIT Scientific Board meetings and keep an eye on new developments in computer technologies. The field has undergone revolutionary advances and I am glad to have been there from the beginning," says the award-winning scientist.