Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/303

 thus depressing the value of the Czechoslovak crown from a ratio of 15 to the ratio of 22 to the dollar.

The country needs a foreign loan to buy cotton, copper, rubber, oils, steel alloys etc. So far only those industries depending for their material upon agriculture are producing and exporting. The present high price of sugar will help to balance Czechoslovak exports and imports; it is estimated that the Republic will sell one billion crowns worth of refined sugar from its 1919 crop. Give the Czechoslovak Republic the necessary credit, and it will soon be on a sound economic basis, creating new values by the skill and industry of its people.

It was a pleasant surprise to tens of thousands of people who know Professor Bohumil Šimek personally, when they read the announcement last month that the ancient University of Prague conferred upon Professor Šimek the honorary degree of doctor of philosophy. For Šimek is not only a scholar whose scientific achievements entitle him to honors from institutions of learning, but he is also a man of public spirit, a popular speaker and a leader of his people.

He was born on a small farm near Shueyville, Iowa, on June 25, 1861. His father was one of those patriots who in 1848 took an active part in the revolutionary movement in Bohemia, and when the absolutist regime was restored, he was object of so much attention on the part of Austrian authorities that he emigrated to America in 1856. Young Bohumil received his first education on the Iowa prairie, and helping his father with farm work he learned to love Nature, to the study of which he later devoted his life. After passing through public schools in Iowa City he entered the Iowa State University and graduated in 1883 as civil engineer. He felt no desire for a money-making career, and devotion to pure science and desire to make himself useful to the community led him to become a teacher. For two years after his graduation he taught at the Iowa City Academy. In 1865 we find him doing advanced work at the Johns Hopkins Marine Laboratory at Beaufort, N. C. From 1885 to 1888 he was science teacher at the Iowa City High School.

His career up to now had been similar to that of thousands of young men, born in this country of Bohemian parents. But whereas most of these young doctors and lawyers and businessmen pick up just enough of their mother’s speech to talk to their Bohemian clients and customers, young Šimek knew the language of his parents as well, as he knew the language of his native country. It is interesting, almost startling to those who know something of Bohemian life in America, to find that this high school teacher who had never been within five thousand miles of Bohemia, made use of vacation time to teach children of Bohemian settlers in Iowa, how to read and write the language of their parents.

During these years Šimek published his first papers on geology and zoology, and the work was so good that he was called to be instructor in the University of Nebraska. He was there from 1888 to 1890, when he returned to his Alma Mater, the Iowa State University, to be instructor in the department of botany. He was promoted successively to assistant professor, professor, head of department, and now is director of the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory,. [sic] In 1912, 1916 and 1918 Prof. Šimek was directing chiefly research work in botany.

In 1902 he had completed work for doctor’s degree, but expecting to take it in Prague only accepted in Iowa the degree of Master of Science. His long projected visit to Europe and Bohemia was delayed by repeated sickness in the family. Finally he went across in 1914, and for one semester he lectured at the Prague University on plant ecology, thus inaugurating an exchange of professors between the oldest university of Central Europe and the very modern state universities of America. It was in appreciation of his scientific work and of his courtesy in lecturing at the university that the Prague university senate decided to confer upon him the honorary degree of doctor of philosophy, but the