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Professor Jaroslav Květina, the first Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy of Charles University in Hradec Králové, passed away

One of the most important personalities of European, Czechoslovak and later Czech pharmacy, the first dean of the Charles University Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Kralove, the father of the scientific and medical field of clinical pharmacy, Prof. RNDr. Jaroslav Květina, DrSc. dr.h.c., has left us forever at the age of 92.

Prof. Květina was the founder of the Charles University Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové. It was mainly thanks to his efforts that the first students could be admitted to study at the Faculty in 1969. Already during his tenure as Dean, the Faculty of Pharmacy of Charles University became an important and respected educational and scientific institution educating highly erudite professionals - pharmacists for work in pharmacies as well as for other areas dealing with drugs; from designing their structure to monitoring their fate in the body and their effects.

The scope of his scientific work was extraordinarily wide, and it is impossible to enumerate in this small space all the achievements he accomplished. He created his own respected school of science aimed at rationalizing the transfer of research findings from preclinical experiments to clinical practice. His greatest contributions undoubtedly include the creation of the concept of clinical pharmacy, which consists of the application of pharmacists as pharmacotherapy experts throughout the broad field of health care. Not only did he create the concept of training clinical pharmacists - the Hradec Králové faculty was a unique institution in this respect in its time on a pan-European scale - but he also had very specific ideas about the involvement of the clinical pharmacist in the entire pharmacotherapeutic process. In this sense, he is mentioned in both European and American encyclopaedias as an important personality.

Thanks to his authority in the Academy of Sciences, in 1985 he succeeded in establishing the Institute of Experimental Biopharmacy, of which he first became an external and, from 1990, an internal director. Following the example of foreign experimental scientific communities, in 1993 he managed to transform this institution into the joint research facility of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the pharmaceutical company PRO.MED.CS Prague. He was the director of this institute until 2007.

Professor Květina received a number of formal high awards: in 2000 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Brno University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences, in the same year he was awarded the honorary title of "Emeritus Professor of Charles University", in 2005 he was elected a member of the Czech Medical Academy. He was an honorary member of a number of institutions (e.g. the Czech Medical Society of J. E. Purkyně, the Czech Society for Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology, the Czech Pharmaceutical Society, the Czech Pharmaceutical Chamber, the Slovak Pharmaceutical Society, the French Pharmacological Society, the Italian Pharmaceutical Association) and a recipient of dozens of honorary medals from Czech and European universities and research institutions (e.g. he is a laureate of the Czech Medical Society of Jan Evangelista Purkyně, the Hradec Králové Region, the City of Hradec Králové, the Josef Hlávka Medal, etc.). All this testifies to his fame not only as a scientist, but above all as a broadly educated personality whose views are worth getting acquainted with.

During his career, Prof. Květina educated a number of scientists who develop his ideas even now and hold or have held important positions in Czech science and Czech higher education, thus spreading the knowledge and principles of objective scientific work that he instilled in them during his active career.

Professor Květina's contribution to Czech and European pharmacy, Charles University and especially the Faculty of Pharmacy he founded will never be forgotten!

Authors of the text: prof. PharmDr. Tomáš Šimůnek, Ph.D.; doc. PharmDr. Jaroslav Roh, Ph.D.; prof. PharmDr. Martin Doležal, Ph.D.