This issue features an article on the life and work of the first post-1989 President of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (CAS), Professor Otto Wichterle. The Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic has been observing this year the 100th anniversary of his birth. A recollection meeting to organize this jubilee took place on October 24, 2013 at the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry. The Institute of Chemical Technology the same day exhibited a bust of Professor Wichterle by sculptor Milan Vácha at a festive ceremony. A chemist and inventor Otto Wichterle achieved world renown not only for his invention the first practicable soft contact lens. He supervised the former Academy of Sciences from 1990 until Czechoslovakia was dissolved in 1992. In 2007, Professor Wichterte was posthumously named to the National Inventors Hall of Fame. and Luděk Svoboda a Gabriela Adámková.
We feature an interview with Professor Martin Rees, one of the speakers at the conference Frontiers of Quantum and Mesoscopis Thermodynamics 2011. Professor Rees in Master of Trinity College and Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge. He holds the honorary title of Astronomer Royal and also is Visiting Professor at Imperial College London and at Leicester university. After studying at the University of Cambridge, he held post-doctoral positions in the UK and the USA before becoming a professor at Sussex University. In 1973, he became a fellow of King's College and Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge (continuing in the latter post until 1991) and served for ten years as director of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy. From 1992 to 2003 he was a Royal Society Research Professor. and Gabriela Adámková.
Akademie věd ČR hostila v rámci oslav svého založení mezinárodní konferenci, které se 27. května 2015 zúčastnili významní hosté ze zahraničí - mj. viceprezident ALLEA (All European Academies) Ed Noord, výkonný ředitel britských Národních laboratoří Andrew Taylor, Peter Haslinger z Leibnizovy společnosti, Sören Wiesenfeldt z Helmholtzovy společnosti a další hosté z Itálie, Velké Británie či USA. and Gabriela Adámková, Luděk Svoboda, Marina Hužvárová.