Profile and history of the department

Department Profile

Currently, the significant research potential of our department is represented by working groups focused on advanced composite materials (high-temperature superconductors, thermoelectrics, carbon nanomaterials, magnesium and calcium binders), semiconductors and nanomaterials, biocoordination chemistry, transition metal oxide materials, synthetic hard materials and research on interactions of substances in low-temperature plasma, optoelectronic materials and materials for photonics.

The department provides teaching of many subjects, including: "General and Inorganic Chemistry I" and "Inorganic Chemistry: Laboratory I", which are common core subjects of the UCT Prague.

History of the Department

Today's Dept. of Inorganic Chemistry was established after the school became independent in 1952 and provided teaching of Inorganic Chemistry and Exercises in Inorganic Chemistry.

Since 1807, General and Inorganic Chemistry, along with Mathematics, has been a founding subject at the Royal Estates Technical College in Prague. Since then, chemistry has always been a base subject at this school, which gradually changed to the Prague Polytechnic, the Czech Technical University in Prague, and in 1920 to the Czech Technical University, of which our school was a part.

 

Inorganic chemistry was taught here by a number of outstanding Czech chemists, e.g. Vojtěch Šafařík (son of a famous Czech revivalist), in 1860, author of the first Czech university textbook  "Základové chemie čili lučby" (approx. "Essentials of Chemistry"). He was a significant contributor to the creation of Czech chemical nomenclature - he eliminated the revivalist effort to find purely Czech names for all elements (e.g. "Kostík" - "FromBone" for P or  "Ďasík" - "LittleDevil" for Co) and for most of them he leaned towards today's Greco-Latin names (although he kept some original Czech names e.g. for oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, silicon, magnesium).

 

 

From 1907 to 1938, Emil Votoček, perhaps the most important and famous figure in Czech chemistry, was a professor of experimental inorganic and organic chemistry at our school. His contribution to the excellent Czech chemical nomenclature is widely known. However, Professor Votoček's main contribution was to increase the level of chemistry teaching and research activities at our school. He was the author of excellent textbooks on inorganic and organic chemistry, from which benefited several generations of students, and he educated a number of important chemists - the best known to the chemical public is Prof. Otto Wichterle (inventor of soft contact lenses, or nylon).

 

 

The establishment of the independent University of Chemical Technology in Prague (known as the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague then) in 1952 was also associated with the establishment of the Department of Inorganic Chemistry, whose first head was Professor František Petrů. Under his leadership, the department scientific research systematically dealt with the chemistry of scandium and rare earths. The professional growth of the department's scientific and pedagogical staff gradually led to thematic differentiation and the creation of several other working teams, especially after 1975, when the department participated in the development of the concept of a new study field "Chemical Technology of Metallic and Special Inorganic Materials" and became a training center of the PGS in the field of inorganic chemistry.

Since 1970, the department has been headed by Prof. Bohumil Hájek, and in 1989, he was substituted by Assoc. Prof. Vratislav Flemr. In 1990, the name of the department has been finally changed to the Dept. of Inorganic Chemistry. Scientific research activities at that time were focused on research into the structure of solids and the study of the relationship between structure and physicochemical properties, on research into the synthesis and applications of some inorganic materials, especially hard and abrasive substances, superconductors, non-crystalline materials, pigments and luminophores, as well as on research into the structure and properties of coordination compounds.

 

In 2009, Prof. David Sedmidubský became the head of the department for the next 16 years, under whose leadership the teaching of all guaranteed subjects has been fundamentally modernized. As a recognized expert in the fields of thermodynamics, crystal chemistry and magnetism of inorganic materials, he managed to launch excellent research at our department and elevate it to the very top of the entire university.

 

 

 

In 2025, the vice-dean for science and research at our Faculty of Chemical Technology, Prof. Ondřej Jankovský, became the department head.