Biography
His father Karel was co-owner of a successful farm-machine factory and small car plant but Otto chose science for his career. After finishing high school in Prostějov, Wichterle began to study at the Chemical and Technological Faculty of the Czech Technical University (now the independent Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague) but he was also interested in medicine. He graduated in 1936 and stayed at the university. In 1939 submitted his second doctorate thesis on chemistry, but the Protectorate regime blocked any further activity at the university. However, Wichterle was able to join the research institute at Baťa's works in Zlín and continue his scientific work. There he led the technical preparation of plastics, namely polyamide and caprolactam. In 1941, Wichterle's team invented the procedure to throw and spool polyamide thread thus making the first Czechoslovak synthetic fiber under the name silon (the invention came independently of the original American nylon procedure in 1938). Wichterle was imprisoned by the Gestapo in 1942 but was released after a few months.
!
Read more about this topic: Otto Wichterle
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people, if he’s any good.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)