Honorary doctorates were awarded, by decision of the Scientific Council of Masaryk University, to Professor Thomas Robert Cech, who made a significant contribution to the formation of the field of biological sciences; and Professor Peter Wolfram Michor, who made a significant contribution to the development of mathematics.
Honorary doctorates are awarded by Masaryk University to outstanding personalities whose extraordinary creative contribution to the development of science, culture and art is internationally recognised. The ceremony of awarding honorary doctorates was conducted by the Vice-Rector for Academic and Cultural Affairs of Masaryk University Jiří Hanuš. He welcomed representatives of universities and research organisations, representatives of state and cultural institutions and members of the university's academic community. Martin Bareš, Rector of Masaryk University, presided over the festive assembly.
The Honorary Doctors were introduced by Tomáš Kašparovský, Dean of the Faculty of Science of Masaryk University. Graduators were Ctirad Hofr, Vice Dean of the Faculty of Science of Masaryk University, and Jan Slovák, Professor of the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics of the Faculty of Science of Masaryk University.
Thomas R. Cech was introduced by Tomáš Kašparovský, Dean of the Faculty of Science at Masaryk University:
“Thomas R. Cech was born in 1947 in Illinois, USA. After successful completion of his Doctorate in Chemistry from the esteemed University of California, Berkeley, and conducting postdoctoral research at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, he joined the University of Colorado Boulder in 1978, where he spent most of his professional life.
It was at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1982 that Dr. Cech and his research group discovered that an RNA molecule from a unicellular pond organism – Tetrahymena, catalyses – speeds up chemical reactions in the complete absence of proteins. The discovery of RNA self-splicing represented the first exception to the long-held belief that biological reactions are always catalysed by proteins. Subsequently, a new probable scenario for the origin of life on Earth was announced. As RNA can be both an information-carrying molecule and a catalyst, RNA may represent the first self-replicating molecular system. The discovery of the catalytic function of ribonucleic acids was so revolutionary that in 1989, Thomas Cech received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Sidney Altman, who independently made the same discovery.
In 1988, Dr. Cech became a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; in 1990 a distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry. From 2000-2009, he even served as the president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the largest private biomedical research organization in the USA, where he successfully developed the organization's focus on scientific education. He then returned to full-time research and teaching at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Thomas Cech became the first executive director of the BioFrontiers Institute and held this position until 2020. He also showed interest in discovering everything new to the youngest colleagues, teaching general chemistry to first-year students with contagious enthusiasm.
By awarding its highest honour, an Honorary Doctorate, Masaryk University expresses the most significant recognition of Professor Cech for his lifelong work as a scientist, educator, and populariser and appreciates a personality who has not only significantly contributed to the development of life sciences at the Faculty of Science of Masaryk University, but who continually develops scientific culture and excellence and spreads the good name of Masaryk University worldwide,” concluded Tomáš Kašparovský.
Thomas R. Cech presented his research in his speech at the ceremony: “One community particularly excited by ribozymes was the origins-of-life group. They had been pondering the chicken-and-egg problem of prebiotic evolution – which came first, the informational molecule (e.g., DNA) or the catalyst that could replicate that information (e.g., protein) -- and it seemed difficult to imagine both arising by random chemistry in the same place at the same time. Now that RNA was revealed as having enzymatic activity in addition to its well-known informational capacity, one could envision an ancient RNA World in which RNA replicated itself. This intriguing possibility probably contributed to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarding the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Altman and me just a few years later in 1989. Building on the ribozyme discovery, my laboratory moved in two directions – we investigated the chemical mechanism of RNA catalysis, research that involved systematically replacing nucleotides and even individual atoms in the macromolecule and measuring reaction rates, and we determined crystal structures of ribozyme domains and eventually the entire active ribozyme to understand structure-function relationships,” Thomas R. Cech said in his speech.
He also mentioned his connection to the Czech Republic: „My maternal grandfather Josef Červeny immigrated from Bohemia to the U.S. in 1913 and set up the Cerveny shoemaker shop in Chicago. Earlier, my great grandfather Čech also had the haček deleted from his surname by a thoughtless immigration officer on Ellis Island, causing great confusion about my name whenever I visit the land of my ancestors. When I was born in Chicago in 1947, Czech was still spoken in the neighbourhoods along Cermak Road and kolaches and other traditional pastries were displayed in every bakery window. Even after my family moved to Iowa City, Iowa, my mother still cooked traditional foods of the old country, including roast pork with caraway seeds, svickova, knedlicky, and – at Christmas – vanocka, which we called houska. One of my daughters still bakes this braided houska at the holidays and distributes it to family and neighbours, much to their delight,” Thomas R. Cech said.
The scientific contribution of Peter W. Michor was presented by Tomáš Kašparovský, Dean of the Faculty of Science at Masaryk University:
“Peter W. Michor was born on 20 May 1949 in Villach, graduated from the University of Vienna in 1973 under the supervision of Johann Cigler in functional analysis, received his habilitation from the same university in 1977 and has been an adjunct professor there since 1990, retired since 2010.
In his research, he always systematically aimed at a natural and complete understanding of the nature of the mathematical objects and connections being built. In mathematics it is usual that the way to solve a problem is to generalize it as much as possible. He thus succeeded in extending the classical methods of mathematical analysis, in a fully geometric approach, to an infinite-dimensional form far beyond Hilbert, Banach, Frechette and other spaces. He summarized this theory, together with Andreas Kriegl, in the groundbreaking monograph The convenient setting of global analysis, published by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) in the late 1990s. He then used this theory, especially in collaboration with David Mumford, one of the world's best-known living mathematicians, for a broad class of applications in shape recognition that are now part of imaging techniques, artificial intelligence for image recognition, and the game industry.
Recently, Peter W. Michor, together with W. Ruppert, has also published a comprehensive historical monograph with Springer, charting the fate of Jewish mathematicians in Central Europe in the last century.
Peter W. Michor's organizational activities have had an extraordinary impact. Together with W. Thirring, a very prominent physicist from Vienna, he founded the Internationales Erwin Schrödinger Institut für Mathematik und Physik in Vienna in 1992, which he then led for 11 years, making it a springboard for the extraordinary development of mathematics and mathematical physics in the Central European region. He was Secretary of the European Mathematical Society from 1995-1998 and chaired the Committee on electronic information and communication, organized by the International Mathematical Union (IMU), from 1999-2006. During that time, he was very instrumental in bringing a rational approach to the general problems of quality and availability of publications to most of the mathematical community.
Peter W. Michor's direct influence on mathematics at Masaryk University dates to the 1980s. Since 1985 he has collaborated with mathematicians in Brno on a modern revision of the foundations of differential geometry and its transfer to applications. To this end, he acquired a diplomatic passport so that he could organize, together with Ivan Kolář, the so-called Central European Seminar in Brno once a month. This research platform has been active since 1986, initially once a month, but now continues two to three times every semester under the leadership of A. Capo from Vienna and J. Slovák from Brno. The most visible result of the work of this seminar is the monograph Natural Operations in Differential Geometry (with I. Kolář and J. Slovák), published by Springer in 1993, translated into Russian shortly afterwards. It is a work of mathematicians and physicists that is still extremely often cited today,” said Tomáš Kašparovský.
In his talk, Peter W. Michor introduced parabolic geometry as well as Masaryk University's deep connection to the mathematical community:
“Currently, there is an important and influential academic community focused on parabolic geometry, which is characterized by numerous publications by PhD students A. Capa, J. Slovák, V. Soucek and many other mathematicians from all over the world. "Parabolic geometry" has emerged as a distinct mathematical discipline, originating not from one of the traditional leading mathematical centres such as the East or West coast of the USA, Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, or Moscow, but rather from the interconnected triangle of Brno, Prague, and Vienna. This development has undeniably placed Masaryk University on the mathematical map.
I am proud to have contributed, at least in part, to the initial impetus for the creation of this field. (…) I feel a deep connection with the mathematical community of Masaryk University, which goes back to July 1984, when the category conference was held at Lake Murten in Switzerland. There, Professor Jiří Rosický attended my lecture on product functors in the category of smooth manifolds. He subsequently informed Professor Ivan Kolar about my work, which led to an invitation to Brno. It was obvious that we both had a deep interest in categorical thinking in differential geometry. We founded the Central European Seminar on Differential Geometry (CES), whose regular participants were Jan Slovák, Jiří Vanžura and Josef Janyška, and which met once a month on Fridays. I am also honoured to count Jan Slovák among my PhD students,” Peter W. Michor said.
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