What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on X on 27 February 2023.

Studničkova was built in 1906.

Until 1947, this was Preslova, after Jan Svatopluk Presl (1791-1849), a botanist who taught zoology and mineralogy at Charles University.

František Karel Studnička was born in Prague in 1870. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at Charles University in 1895.

Four years later, he became an associate professor of medicine at the University, and also started a traineeship at the Public and University Library (which has been called the National Library since 1918).

However, the 20th century took his career to Brno: in 1901, he became director of the library at Brno University of Technology, which had been founded two years earlier.

He held this role until 1919, the same year in which he became a professor of histology and embryology at Masaryk University (also in Brno).

He also published many works, the most famous of which is Úvod do plasmatologie (Introduction to Plasmatology), for which he received a state prize in 1952.

He was nominated twice for a Nobel Prize, in 1934 and in 1953.

Studnička died in Prague in 1955.