Jan Závada, founding member of the Learned Society, died at the age of 90

It is with great sadness that we have just received the news that Jan Závada, PhD, molecular oncologist, expert in virus genetics, and founding member of the Learned Society, died on Friday, January 5, at the age of 90.

Jan Závada was the son of the poet Vilém Závada. He was born on December 10, 1933 in Prague. He graduated from the Faculty of Science of Charles University in Prague (1952-1956), worked at the Institute of Virology of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava from 1956 to 1992, and then worked at the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the CAS in Prague. He spent twelve months at the Institute of Virology in Glasgow (1965-1966), then worked as a visiting researcher at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories in London (1969-1975) and at Harvard Medical School in Boston (1982-1983). 

He was a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and the European Association for Cancer Research.

He also found time for science popularization. With Vladimír Vonka, he wrote the book Záhada rakoviny (The Mystery of Cancer) in 1984.

Jan Závada with his wife at the Institute of Virology of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava (1965).
Image: archive of Zuzana Závadová, taken from the Memory of Nations website