Profesor v Antarktidě – Prošek Pavel (2009)

The fourth volume of the Personality edition presents a portrait of Professor Pavel Prošek, who significantly deviates from the traditional image of a university professor buried in books. He is a polar explorer – although he himself dislikes that term and claims that the era of polar explorers ended with Amundsen. He is a man who sets high goals. Thanks to him, the Czech Republic has a scientific polar station in Antarctica. Pavel Prošek works as a climatologist at Masaryk University in Brno. According to the opinions of his colleagues, scientists, and even those close to him, Prošek is a person with very few flaws, he is tenacious and very determined. Although his colleagues speak of him in a way that suggests Prošek and polar research are inseparable concepts, it didn't have to be that way. He became a polar explorer by chance. As an assistant, he went on an internship to Switzerland in 1973. The institute where he worked focused on research in the Arctic. He was supposed to go on a polar expedition with the Swiss back then, but he was not allowed to. However, his interest was sparked, and the scientist had his polar baptism in 1985 in Svalbard, where he traveled with colleagues and friends from the University of Wrocław. He has been to Svalbard a total of three times. Then he began to look towards the opposite end of the world – and eventually made significant...