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Czech scientific successes

Foreigners can also compete for the Czech equivalent of the Nobel Prize

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Authors of the most important discoveries and inventions were awarded the title of Czech Brain at the end of 2009. This project, which supports scientific and technical intelligence in the country, was announced in March 2002. Since then, Czech scientists, inventors and other experts are awarded prizes every year, as well as children, or more precisely teenagers, who are interested in science. The most talented students in Europe also received awards within the scope of the international Innovating Minds contest.

photo: ceska hlava

In addition to others, Prof. MUDr. Josef Koutecký, DrSc. received the title of Czech Brain for his life-long work and research in the field of paediatric oncology. The INDUSTRIE prize, for which foreign companies can also compete, was awarded to C.C. Novasoft, a.s., for its unique “Novavoice“ software solution, which is capable of transforming spoken words into text. It is also capable of transcribing technical speech, because it currently has a vocabulary of half a million words. The website at http://www.ceskahlava.cz states that, “The contest statutes assume that the prize will be awarded to a domestic or foreign company active in the Czech Republic, which realises the most outstanding new technology or product in the Czech Republic during a period of 12 months before the application's closing date.“
The youngest prize winner to be awarded the title of Czech Brain was fourteen-year-old Martin Fiala from the Pohořelice Elementary School, who created the Asia computer encyclopaedia. It can also be used by blind people because all its 76 articles are narrated. Marek Fišer of Pardubice, who created the MAMURE program for optically distinguishing notes, is another Czech Brain. MAMURE is also capable of reading crooked and deformed manually drawn staves, thereby saving many people many hours of work.
“The Czech Brain competition’s immodest goal is to achieve social awareness on the level of a sort of national Nobel Prize. The purpose of the project is to create awareness that our country can only prosper if we are capable of bringing up new Heyrovskys (awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1959) and Wichterles (inventor of the contact lens) and if we are capable of materially and socially appreciating them,” say the organisers of the Czech Brain competition.
For the second time this year prizes were also awarded in the international Innovating Minds 2009 competition for secondary school students, primarily in the scientific and technical fields. The work was judged and evaluated by a prestigious international jury, which included Nobel Prize winners. Students from Italy, Spain, Slovenia and Hungary were awarded prizes on the basis of a decision by the expert jury. The winner in each category received a financial reward in the value of 5,000 euros. You can find more information on the winners here.
Czech Brain and the Czech iDNES.cz news portal have declared a contest for the most useful invention in history. Nearly four thousand voters decided that this invention was the internet (1,803 votes). Type printing came second (1,449 votes) and vaccination was third (1,247 votes). Fourth prize went to paper (1,052 votes). The toilet (471 votes) came tenth. Remote control and the atom bomb were both last, with ten votes.