The Slovak Academy of Sciences

Founded in 1942


The Slovak Academy of Sciences and Arts was founded by the Parliament of the Slovak Republic in Bratislava on 2 July 1942. It following in the footsteps of several earlier academies and societies such as the Slovak Learned Fellowship founded in 1792. A proposal made in 1892 to found a Slovak Academy of Sciences led to the founding of the Slovak Association of Museums.

Following World War I, a declaration favouring political union of the Czechs and Slovaks was issued in 1918 and a democratic constitution was adopted on 29 February 1920. It was during the difficult years of World War II that the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Arts was founded in Bratislava. Following the war, a provisional government controlled Czechoslovakia until 1948 when the Communists took control. Czechoslovakia was forced to adopt the Soviet model of government. On 18 July 1953 the Slovak National Council enacted legislation renaming the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Arts as the Slovak Academy of Sciences and controlling legislation was passed by the National Council. In 1959 the Department of Mathematics was formed on the ground floor of Slovak Academy of Sciences building. In 1966 the Department of Mathematics was renamed the Mathematical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

In January 1977 a group of Czechoslovak intellectuals signed a petition known as Charter 77 setting out their grievances against the government. Most members of the group were arrested but the protest they initiated gathered pace and a popular uprising, the Velvet Revolution, ended communist rule of Czechoslovakia in the autumn of 1989. On 17 November 1989 the Slovak Academy of Sciences was able to begin the process of moving to become an independent scientific research institution.

The Academy consists of three sections: Physical Sciences; Life Sciences; and Social Sciences. It has a number of Institutes and members of the Board of the Academy are elected as representatives of the Institutes. It publishes a large number of scientific journals but we only look briefly at the mathematics publications. The Mathematical Institute publishes the major journal Mathematica Slovaca and also the Tatra Mountains Mathematical Publications. The journal Mathematica Slovaca is a continuation of the journal Matematicko-fyzikálny sborní which began publication in 1951, becoming Matematicko- fyzikálny casopis in 1953, then Matematicko casopis from 1967, until the present name was adopted in 1976.

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Last Updated August 2004