Abstract
PROF. VOJTECH ROSICKÝ was a distinguished Czech mineralogist whose scientific work was cut short by his execution at Mauthausen concentration camp in February 1942, in his sixty-second year. His father, who died in 1919, had been a naturalist and writer on scientific subjects, and young Rosický grew up in an atmosphere of excursions to forest and mountains in search of specimens. He began as science master at a Prague Gymnasium, for which he wrote a “Chemie a Mineralogie”. Later he went to Munich as Groth's assistant; eventually he returned to Prague and, in 1920, became professor of mineralogy at the new University of Brno. His publications—mostly in Czech although some appeared in the Zeitschrift für Krystallographie and in French journals — dealt with crystallographic methods, the physical properties and measurements of crystals and the relation between physical properties and water content. He described, often in great detail, a variety of minerals from Europe, South Africa and South America, including a joint work with V. M. Goldschmidt on a topaz from Minas Geraes. Rosický also made some petrographical studies and wrote several text-books, including a lengthy “Krystalografie”, one volume of which appeared in 1929 (with more than five hundred illustrations). The second half he left in manuscript, which is now being prepared for publication by Dr. J. Sekanin, with whom he was conducting X-ray crystallographic researches until the University was closed in 1939.
V. Rosický
By F. Slavík. Pp. 24. (Prague: Czech Academy of Science and Arts, 1946.) 12 crowns.
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D., J. V. Rosický. Nature 160, 735 (1947). https://doi.org/10.1038/160735a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/160735a0