Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/282
The Influence of Dr. Jan Evangelista Purkyně on the Development of Biology.
For the Student Life by Dr. Hilary Jurica, O.S.B., Head of Department of Biology at St. Procopius College. Lisle, Ill.
| This article contains interesting facts about the Father of modern laboratory methods, Dr. Jan Evangelista Purkyně, a Czech. Dr. Hilary S. Jurica, O.S.B., the author of this contribution to the S.L., is head of the department of biology and professor of botany at St. Procopius College, Lisle, Ill. He received his scientific training at the University of Chicago, taking both the M.S. and the Ph.D. degrees at that institution. Several of his scientific researches, notably the “Development of the Head and Flower of Dipsacus Sylvestris”, “Morphology of Umbelliferae”, and the “Grouping of Plants” were published in the Botanical Gazette. He has delivered a number of addresses before the Illinois State Academy of Science and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, and has contributed articles to the “Catholic School Interests”, the “Educational Screen”, and other periodicals. He has received favorable comment for his many charts successfully exhibited at the Universities of Chicago, Illinois, Indiana: and at the International Congress of Plant Science at Cornell University at Ithaca, New York. In recognition of his researches he was elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the Sigma Xi.
—Editor’s note. |
HERE IS a growing tendency among textbook writers as well as instructors of various sciences to pay tribute to the men whose carefully executed and accurately recorded researches have practically revolutionized the field of science for the past century. And this tendency is but natural, a mere reply to the curiosity aroused on the part of students when they behold the phenomenal revelations of modern science. For, many a problem that was a deep mystery for the learned some seventy, nay, even fifty years ago, is easily explained and demonstrated by many of our high school boys and girls. This change is due to the fact that textbook instruction was supplemented by laboratory work. The university of Breslau in Silesia was the first school to make this introduction; and that through the untiring efforts of Jan Evangelista Purkyně, a Czech.
The subject of our study was born in Libochovicích, Czechoslovakia, Dec. 17, 1787. After finishing his primary grades in his local school, he was sent to the Academy (Gymnasium), and Normal school, condueted by the Piarists at Mikulova in Moravia. Upon graduation Purkyně spent some time as a teacher in the grade schools of Strážnice, and later in the normal school at Litomyšle. But the call for higher learning, especially along lines of natural history, prompted him to give up