Profesor Oldřich Švarný (* May 1, 1920), a renowned sinologist, phonetician and – last but not least – a devoted teacher, passed away on April 19, 2011. The article reviews Švarný’s research in the field of Mandarin prosody with a special regard to the prosodic transcription of Mandarin he had developed. Švarný’s transcription marks two major prosodic features of Mandarin: junctures, and the levels of stress / tone prominency for each syllable. It employs pinyin notation, adding various graphical marks. The present article shows the historical development of Švarný´s prosodic transcription within the context of his lifetime phonetic research and in relation to the works he had published. The following article (Nový Orient 2011 No. 4) will bring a detailed description of the four subsequent versions of the transcription with the samples of text, and the list of literature.