1 Introduction – Roots in the Nazi Occupation

Historiography elaborating on the history of the institutes that comprised the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (Československá akademie věd, founded in 1952) has so far primarily accentuated the acquisition of Soviet experience or, to a lesser extent, drawn attention to some features indicating continuity with the existing non-university scientific institutions. More recent research, however, has shown that an extraordinarily important role in the formation of some key institutes in the newly established Academy of Sciences was played by the period of the occupation of Czechoslovakia from 1939 to 1945 (Franc, 2013, pp. 9–10; Jareš, 2018, pp. 171–172; Franc, 2019, p. 83–84). It was this era that saw the emergence of academic teams that formed the core of the institutes carrying out basic research which became the principal institutes on which the structure of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences was later based. It was also the period in which the key interpersonal relationships were laid out between the most important representatives of the nascent generation of academicians whose influence had a major impact on Czechoslovak science after World War Two. This involved both friendships between individual academicians as well as strong mutual antipathy that obviously also had an impact on the institutional development (for instance, Wagner, 2003, pp. 151–152). This happened despite the fact that from 1939 to 1945 scientific work was considerably limited as a result of the closure of Czech universities by the Nazi occupation government and the overall brutal repression against leading members of the Czech intelligentsia (Jareš 2018; Šimůnek, 2021). The harsh intervention in the conservative elements of the existing academic networks, however, also revealed the potential of new opportunities that certain prominent figures were eventually able to use very well to their advantage. The loosening of some very rigid hierarchical networks in the academic community facilitated the career of some talented assistants or young associate professors far quicker than could be imagined in ordinary circumstances. The forced departure from the world of academia, moreover, opened up brand new horizons for academicians embarking on their career, and led to reconsideration of the preconceived notions concerning how science and research should work (Franc, 2021). Some academicians who had up to then worked at universities found new jobs as secondary school teachers, while others worked for the surviving research institutions that the Nazis intended to use for war research. However, an important role in the story of the establishment and history of the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (Ústav organické chemie a biochemie ČSAV) was played by a group of young academicians who, after the closure of the universities, left to find work in industrial research and development.

This was quite common practice in chemistry, and at least two big centres were thus established in which the enormous creative potential of young as well as experienced scientists and of students was concentrated. The first site was in the laboratories of the footwear and rubber plants of the Baťa concern in Zlín where, during World War Two, one of the most important Czech scientists of the latter half of the 20th century, the macromolecular chemist and in 1958–1969 the director of the ČSAV Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry (Ústav makromolekulární chemie ČSAV), Otto Wichterle, worked (Wichterle, 1992). The other was linked to the laboratories of the Association for Chemical and Foundry Production (Spolek pro chemickou a hutní výrobu), a company with a long tradition and strong capital, based in Prague-Vysočany and later in Rybitví, near Pardubice. This other organisation became the place that formed the core of the future Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry (Ferles, 1998, Lorencová, 2007). It is perhaps worth noting that the technical director of the Association for Chemical and Foundry Production was Viktor Ettel, whose appointment in the early 1930 s was supported by the Czechoslovak state after he had worked in military research for many years. It was he who organised the recruitment of promising academicians and students from the closed universities. The principal academic authority of the whole group was associate professor Rudolf Lukeš, until then employed at the Czech Technical University in Prague, who is seen as the founder of Czech synthetic organic chemistry. Lukeš tutored the young chemistry students, and František Šorm, later the founder and organiser of the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, was his informal assistant. Here, the two academicians also worked, either jointly or individually, on various research tasks for the company’s management, and this is where František Šorm was just beginning to work on one of the key topics of his academic career – plant compounds, especially the so-called sesquiterpenes. The group in the Association for Chemical and Foundry Production was linked with another group around Zora Drápalová, František Šorm’s wife. That group worked in the Interpharma company laboratories in Praha-Modřany. The young staff and students of the closed universities not only conducted research and attended seminars headed mainly by František Šorm, but also spent their free time together boating, then an extraordinarily popular sport in Bohemia (Smetana, 1965, pp. 100–105). This was in fact the controlled establishment of a scientific school in which as early as during the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the core of the staff of the future academic institute was formed, which was to play the key role there until virtually the end of the 1970 s. Just to give a general idea, the group included not only Šorm, but also his two consecutive successors as directors of the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, who managed the institution until the late 1980 s, and also a long-time director of the ČSAV Institute of Theoretical Foundations of Chemical Technology (Ústav teoretických základů chemické techniky ČSAV) that later split from the Institute.

2 Protectorate Industrial Research Methods as a Model for Non-university Research after World War II

Not only was František Šorm able to develop his undeniable organisational skills here; most of all he gained experience with team research, something that would later become the basic method used at the ČSAV institutes in the natural sciences. It was this method that made the academic work of the later institutes different from the existing work at universities. It must also be mentioned that there was quite high overemployment at industrial research institutions during the Nazi occupation because that was where characters such as Viktor Ettel sought to protect young people in particular from the threat of forced labour in the Reich (Lorencová, 2013, pp. 137–142).

It was also an environment with enormous creative potential, mainly consisting of young talents, where pioneering thoughts could be put into practice quite easily. Another positive factor was its focus on specific tasks with clearly defined objectives that went in line with the demands of society. Even though the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences was later involved in basic research, its most successful institutes, including the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, profiled themselves primarily as yielding practical results, namely various patents, etc.

3 After the Liberation of Czechoslovakia

Immediately after the liberation of Czechoslovakia, František Šorm’s career progressed in leaps and bounds, and within a relatively short period of time he had become the most influential figure not only in the chemical sciences but in Czechoslovakia’s entire academic community. The steps in his career were accompanied by institutional transformations of the organisations he managed. The first stage, related to his habilitation as early as in 1945 and his professorship at the University of Chemical Engineering, then part of the Czech Technical University in Prague, took place at the Institute of Organic and Explosive Compounds Technology (Ústav technologie lučebnin organických a výbušných), later renamed to the Institute of Organic Compounds Technology (Ústav technologie látek organických) and, eventually, to the Institute of Organic Technology (Ústav organické technologie), which was also part of the Czech Technical University. This is where he gathered not only his colleagues from the time of Czechoslovakia’s occupation but also other new talents, especially Josef Rudinger and Jiří Sichr, who spent the war in exile in Great Britain.

Back in 1945, František Šorm also made a decision that considerably accelerated his staggering career: he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. One reason for this must have been his marriage to Zora Drápalová, a pre-war supporter of the Communist Party and his closest academic colleague, but this was also a pragmatic step, as he probably came to the conclusion that only the Communist Party with its efforts to achieve centralisation and its intention to concentrate finances would enable him to build up the chemical research institution he envisaged. Šorm’s institute, then part of the Czech Technical University, was already different from the existing concept of work in a university institute – it was based on teams working on a specific topic. That, however, was not much in line with the concept of the university as an educational organisation, and František Šorm therefore sought new institutional forms. A similar process also took place in other Eastern Bloc countries, such as Poland and Hungary (Pleskot & Rutkowski, 2012; Biegelbauer, 1997, 2000; Gebert, 2005; Heinecke, 2016).

4 Through the Central Institute of Chemistry to the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences

As early as in 1946, the government agenda first mentioned the establishment of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences as a leading academic institution for Czech and Slovak science, but the form of its establishment and institutional structure long remained unclear. The major changes after World War Two and especially the absolute seizure of political power by the Communist Party in 1948 gave those prominent figures associated with the party’s policy a unique opportunity to establish academic institutions that would be based on a brand new concept, provided that they succeeded in gaining political support from the leading domestic officials, and especially from the key Soviet representatives in the relevant academic disciplines, who often had the final say.

In 1950, Šorm’s institution was transformed into the Central Institute of Chemistry (Ústřední ústav chemický), one of seven basic research institutes that formed the new academic structure, with the so-called Scientific Research Headquarters (Ústředí vědeckého výzkumu), then part of the Central Planning Office (Ústřední úřad plánovací), being the umbrella institution. Similar institutions were also established in some other Soviet Bloc countries, such as Hungary, to counterbalance the overly conservative and insufficiently loyal university and academic institutions (Biegelbauer, 1997; Biegelbauer, 2000; Gebert, 2005). Those appointed to lead the central Czechoslovak institutes were mostly younger scientists who had still not fully made their way into the academic community’s official elite but appeared to offer great promise. The only exception was the director of the Institute of Polarography (Polarografický ústav), Jaroslav Heyrovský, one generation older, later to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, who was, however, facing accusations of collaborating with the Nazis during World War Two, and whose return to the academic elite was backed by Soviet academicians who had long been aware of the practical importance of the polarographic method that Heyrovský had invented (Říman & Houdek, 2017, pp. 97–98).

František Šorm and several dozen other natural scientists and doctors spent a few months on an internship in the Soviet Union in the same year, where they were primarily to be duly indoctrinated by the “progressive teachings of Lysenko and Pavlov” (Franc, 2009, 2010). Unlike the other participants, as the documents show, Šorm was by no means captivated by Soviet science as a whole, and even returned earlier than originally planned. Despite this, the internship was of fundamental significance for the further development of research in his institute. There was a relatively rich tradition in organic chemistry in the Czech sciences, but it was only in the Soviet Union that Šorm realised the potential of biochemistry, and began to introduce it immediately where he worked. The scope of his research varied between organic chemistry and biochemistry, but his wife Zora eventually became the leader of the entire biochemistry section. Her unsuccessful competitor was the young Josef Říman, an academician who much later, from 1985 to 1989, was the chairman of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (Říman & Houdek, 2017, pp. 70–75).

Very early in the 1950 s, preparatory works were launched to establish the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences as an umbrella institution for scientific institutes and the network of basic research institutes following the Soviet example. Despite his young age (he was only 47 in 1950), František Šorm, a keen party member just like many other leading academicians in his institute, played an active role in the preparatory commissions.

5 Basic Research with Practical Results, Or the Institute as the Showcase of Czechoslovak Science

After the establishment of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, the Central Institute of Chemistry became part of it as the ČSAV Institute of Organic Chemistry (Ústav organické chemie ČSAV) from 1 January 1953, and František Šorm was appointed as the general scientific secretary of the institution as a whole. (Franc and Dvořáčková, 2019) This meant that he actually became the most powerful man in the whole Academy, as both its president Zdeněk Nejedlý (in the first months also Minister of Education) and his first deputy, the physiologist Vilém Laufberger, sought to avoid everyday administrative work, and had no objections to that agenda being passed to the scientific secretary. Moreover, unlike František Šorm, as former representatives of traditional academic societies, their ideas of the new forms of academic institutions and their work were very vague, and they preferred low-staffed institutes concentrated around regular members of the Academy, while František Šorm was also the director of one of the greatest ČSAV institutes with around 100 employees, about a third of which scientists. In the mid-1950 s Šorm actually became one of the most influential figures in science and science policy in Czechoslovakia. In this position he strongly advocated methods of academic work that were based on extraordinarily intense experimentation and teamwork, which made the work at a ČSAV institute different from work at universities. Incidentally, this approach was behind his dismissive stance towards most of the social sciences, where no experiments were conducted and most of the results were individualised. His emphasis on experimentation led to him requiring that others rigorously keep to their working hours, and the academicians were even supposed to study the specialised literature in their own time.

As mentioned above, František Šorm strove to have research work put to practical use and respect the demands of society, from the time he worked in industrial research. He primarily focused on research into medicaments (and over time, a special ČSAV Institute of Pharmacology [Farmakologický ústav ČSAV] developed from the institute he managed, even though research into medicaments still continued at the original institute), including chemical analogies to various natural substances, which yielded significant practical results. Another important aspect of his research was the structure of proteins. From the late 1950 s, the Institute focused on searching for potential cytostatic drugs, which was then an extraordinarily popular pursuit, even a fad. The activities of the Institute, however, also continued very intensely in other areas of chemical research that could lead to practical applied research, such as artificial textile fibres (this involved the development of cloth for men’s suits that would need no ironing).

With research expanding into the field of biochemistry, the transformation of the Central Institute of Chemistry into a ČSAV institute greatly extended its scope of research into an area then somewhat neglected in Czechoslovakia and limited to only a few topics, mainly in the sphere of Czechoslovakia’s traditional food industry disciplines: sugar and beer production. The stimulus for this, however, was not prompted by the new organisational format, but came from outside, namely from the Soviet Union as mentioned above, where biochemistry, suitable for applied research results, had already long been thriving. On the contrary, the Institute of Organic Chemistry and, from 1955, the ČSAV Institute of Chemistry (Chemický ústav ČSAV), embarked on a different course from that of the rival Institute of Biology (Biologický ústav). Its activities did not try to cover the entire scope of chemistry; in particular, it refused to involve inorganic chemistry, which was why this discipline was not developed until later, and with considerable difficulty. The field of physical chemistry, on the other hand, was covered from the beginning by the highly specific ČSAV Institute of Polarography.

As with the other big ČSAV institutes, several specialised institutes also split from the Institute of Organic Chemistry to become independent, such as the Institute of Pharmacology; the Institute of Theoretical Foundations of Chemical Technology – actually a chemical engineering institute; the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry, led by the aforementioned Otto Wichterle; and also the Institute of Experimental Biology and Genetics (Ústav experimentální biologie a genetiky), later the Institute of Molecular Genetics (Ústav molekulární genetiky), led by Josef Říman (see above). Despite that, the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry remained one of the greatest ČSAV institutes as regards staff numbers (189, of which 79 scientists in 1960).

The size of the teams (often 20–30, sometimes 5–10 persons) allowed many tasks to be resolved in a most extensive manner – by producing a large series of many variants of various compounds, from which the most suitable ones were selected. This was quite distinct, for instance, in the preparation of the so-called analogies to natural medicaments, a direction which as early as in the 1950 s and 1960 s yielded great practical results and proved considerably profitable. It was not exceptional for many new compounds to be produced, before ways were sought to use them. Although this seemed inefficient, it made the institute by far the richest academic institution in the Czech Republic at the end of the 20th century, owing to patents filed by the then director and František Šorm’s loyal follower, Antonín Holý, which form the basis for the most widely used AIDS medication today. The initial compounds were in fact the result of constant experimentation, even though it initially lacked any specific direction, and their antiviral effect was discovered more or less accidentally, owing to Holý’s collaboration with the Belgian academic Eric de Clercq.

6 The Dream of the Global Centre of Chemical Research vs. Czechoslovak Economic Reality

In my opinion, Šorm’s activities in the Communist Party and his unconditional support for the communist policy reflected his conviction that it was a system that provided the best conditions for concentrating all resources on chemical research, something he considered highly desirable. (Nisonen-Trnka, 2012) His main aim was to build up the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry (the name in use from 1962) as one of the world’s foremost chemical research centres. To achieve this objective, he made great use of his privileged position in the Academy of Sciences, where he replaced Zdeněk Nejedlý as the chairman in 1962, and in the Communist Party, where he was also a member of the Central Committee for many years and, in the 1960 s, also a member of the Party’s highly influential Ideological Commission of the Central Committee. His interests were certainly in line with the extraordinary emphasis placed on chemistry in the countries of the Soviet Bloc, especially during the rule of Nikita Khrushchev, as chemistry was seen as one of the crucial scientific disciplines that would guarantee the continuous improvement of standards of living for the population. At the same time, the emphasis on practical results as presented by Šorm was fully in accordance with the Communist Party’s general requirements for the role of science in society. However, Šorm’s method as applied in the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry was extremely time consuming, and could not fit within the required and accurately defined annual research work plans, with clearly predefined objectives and deliverables.

Like other institutes of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Chemistry, or Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, was also financed from the state budget and, especially during the first years of its existence, received generous financial support. It was reduced somewhat later, but his privileged position enabled Šorm to save the Institute from larger cuts in the period that followed, marked by a general effort to achieve savings. However, what František Šorm could not have provided most of all was enough of the “hard” western currency, especially US dollars, needed for the purchase of instruments. The lack of the US dollar was generally one of the biggest weaknesses of the Czechoslovak economy. The Institute was therefore able to purchase some of the necessary instruments only after several years of regularly sending requests for funding. The Institute sometimes resorted to cooperating with other research centres, such as university centres, while in other cases attempts were made to build the unavailable instruments in the Institute’s workshops or even the central development workshops of the Academy of Sciences, with a greater or lesser degree of success. Antonín Holý, for instance, mentioned in his unpublished memoirs that the first nuclear magnetic resonance instrument that the Institute began to use as the first in Czechoslovakia was a “home-made instrument, a kind of experimental combat device” (Holý, 2002). Instruments that were eventually purchased or built were often overloaded because they were used not only by the Institute but also by many other research organisations. The Institute was able to receive royalties from its patents in USD, but they were transferred to the state budget. Moreover, the actual amounts were rather low until the 1990s. This was because the Institute, or the Academy of Sciences as a whole, lacked western currency to pay the fees for patent applications, and had no funds at all for the further development, for instance, of medicaments. It was therefore necessary to conclude contracts with foreign (western) partners, something that the Institute was not allowed to do directly. Only specialised privileged enterprises in a specific field of foreign trade were allowed to enter into international contracts. In the case of the Institute, this was usually the state foreign trade enterprise “Polytechna”, which focused on mediating technical and often also technological cooperation. More importantly, from 1961 Polytechna had a monopoly on all international patent licences, acquired from the Czechoslovak Chamber of Commerce. In the late 1960 s, the patent section of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences tried to implement an independent policy, and in 1968 the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry also considered hiring an independent officer to handle the patent agenda; however, after the occupation of Czechoslovakia, the need to save as much foreign currency as possible became a major limitation on filing patent applications in western countries.

František Šorm considered international cooperation in science to be hugely important, irrespective of the ongoing Cold War. The involvement of his institute in the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences played an important role in this respect, as the Academy had long had a real monopoly on the utilisation of international relations in science, while university staff were only rarely allowed to go to western countries or the USA. Šorm, however, strove for absolute equality and mutuality, assuming that US scientists would regularly come for internships and long-term stays at his institute in Prague. He also demanded that his staff publish their outputs solely in Collection of Czechoslovak Chemical Communications, a journal published by the Institute, which he intended to make one of the most important, if not the most important, periodicals for this field of science. However, by the 1960 s it was absolutely clear that despite all the privileges, the Czechoslovak economy was unable to finance a research institute that would serve as a full-fledged counterpart of the chemical research centres in the US. Paradoxically enough, in the 1960 s the gap between the world’s absolute top class centres and the Prague-based ČSAV Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry rather tended to widen in comparison with the preceding decade, and even the thawing of the atmosphere in society that boosted creativity and brought greater openness to stimuli from abroad did nothing to change this. Even the institutional background of this research centre and its unrivalled position within the Czechoslovak science system proved to be completely unimportant. For chemists who wanted to play an equal role in the international academic community, several months of internship in any West European chemical research centre or, ideally, in the USA, practically became a necessity. On the contrary, Czech institutes at universities and those that were part of the Academy of Sciences did not have much to offer in this respect. One certain exception was perhaps the Institute of Polarography, headed by the aforementioned Nobel Prize laureate Jaroslav Heyrovský, although that was able to benefit from Heyrovský’s international renown previously gained between the wars.

7 The Fall of František Šorm’s Career after the 1968 Occupation of Czechoslovakia and Its Impact on the Institute

The meteoric career of František Šorm suffered a devastating blow after the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet army and other Warsaw Pact armies in August 1968. During the reforms that were carried out in Czechoslovakia from the beginning of 1968, František Šorm mostly adopted the stance of a hesitant centrist who sought to maintain his extraordinary powers. At the same time he had to face sharp criticism as a result of his unquestionable loyalty to the communist leadership as well as his often arrogant standpoints, and his position as chairman of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences was at risk, even though he enjoyed strong support especially from his own institute (Franc, 2019; Šmidák, 2011). However, after the occupation started, this “great man of science” was personally dismayed as he was allegedly prevented directly by the Soviet soldiers from performing his office in the headquarters of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, eventually joined the opponents of the occupation, and continued to openly maintain this stance after the subsequent political changes. Šorm’s forced departure from all his positions obviously had a very adverse effect on the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry (where he stayed on basically as an ordinary member of staff until the late 1970 s); however, his legacy and his working methods remained alive there and, as mentioned earlier, contributed to the new boom of the institution in the 1990 s.

One could perhaps object that the above description of the Institute’s history is presented solely as a result of the ideas and efforts of a single man. However, this is exactly what I see as one of the basic formative principles of the ČSAV institutes in the 1950 s and 1960 s: the Communist Party left concrete policy in the individual scientific disciplines to be made by selected loyal scientists who went on to become really powerful men of science, similar to the so-called ‘mandarins of science’ in the German Democratic Republic. They possessed almost unlimited opportunities to shape the institutional landscape in their discipline. In doing so, they also determined the basic directions of research, and influenced the way its results would be applied (Malycha, 2016). Compared to the German Democratic Republic, however, these great men held much less power in their position, for many reasons. Primarily, they were mostly younger-generation scientists who achieved their renown only with the assistance of the Communist Party. Their successes were not as undeniable in international terms as were, for instance, those of Gustav Hertz or Manfred von Ardenne. František Šorm, and his rival Ivan Málek even more, linked their destiny too tightly with the political sphere, and the quick and disruptive exchange of political elites after the August 1968 occupation of Czechoslovakia with the subsequent so-called normalisation of society could not have left them unscathed. Moreover, they did not expect that the Communist Party would baulk at fundamentally disrupting the operation of key academic institutes by dismissing their leaders, and often, as with the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, also their founders and those who laid the basic concepts of the organisation.

8 František Šorm’s Legacy and the Way to New Success

But while the ČSAV Institute of Microbiology, for instance, basically never recovered from the political purges of the normalisation period, the ČSAV Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry somehow preserved Šorm’s legacy in the following decades. After all, until 1986 it was managed by Šorm’s colleagues who had formed the core of the staff from the very beginning. And in 1994, the directorship was taken up by Antonín Holý, who never held back his admiration for František Šorm, and pro-actively followed up on the working methods of his role model. Hence even in the 21st century, the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, now part of the transformed Czech Academy of Sciences, still reflects the legacy of its founder and continues his lifelong managerial work. To some degree, the Institute also manages to maintain its privileged position, now no longer derived from political power and the relationships that entailed, but based on the commercial success of Antonín Holý, whose research became principal for the most widespread medicaments used to treat AIDS. As Antonín Holý himself put it, his discoveries were the result of exactly those methods established during the era of František Šorm – tireless experimental work that often takes many years or even decades, and the production of a great many new compounds whose potential use is only discovered later. And at the same time, the successes of the close of the 20th century also reflected the traditional efforts to combine basic research and the application results that respond to the demands of society.