On 19 December, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research remembers one of its first two Vice-Directors: an outstanding Czechoslovak theoretical physicist Václav Votruba (19.12.1909 – 11.09.1990).

After graduating from Charles University in Prague in 1933, Václav Votruba worked as a researcher at the Institute of Theoretical Physics and as a teacher at universities and schools of Czechoslovakia. In 1945, Votruba obtained his doctoral degree in natural sciences. In the 1946-1947 academic year, he studied at the University of Zurich under the guidance of professors Wolfgang Pauli and Friedrich Wenzel.

Along with teaching, Václav Votruba studied the theory of physics. His scientific research is devoted to nuclear physics, quantum field theory, elementary particle physics, symmetry in the theory of elementary particles, and quantum electrodynamics. He was the first one in the world who solved the problem of an electron-positron pair production in the collision of a photon with an electron. He suggested the idea that pi-mesons can be interpreted as a three-charged state of elementary particles with isotopic spin 1. He used the isotopic spin algebra to order the system of elementary particles.

In 1956–1959, Votruba was invited to JINR and elected as one of the first two JINR Vice-Directors. During his work at the Institute, Professor Václav Yuzefovich Votruba made a significant, fundamental contribution to its establishment and development. He was actively engaged in the formation of the structure of the Institute’s scientific directions, the international team, as well as the instrumental support of research. Professor Votruba did a lot to organize cooperation between JINR and CERN. Owing to his efforts, during the first two years of the Institute’s work, the number of employees from states outside the USSR increased from 44 to 122, many of them were world-renowned; the problem of attracting physicists-experimentalists was solved.

Upon completing his work at JINR, in 1959–1967, Votruba headed the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Czech Technical University in Prague. Moreover, on his return to Czechoslovakia, he continued his teaching career as a Professor of theoretical physics at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Charles University in Prague, as well as at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics and the Faculty of Nuclear Physics at the Czech Technical University. At the same time, Professor Votruba was fluent in several languages: German, Russian, English, and French. He also wrote a number of textbooks for universities.

Academician of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, laureate of the State Prize of Czechoslovakia “For Merit to Society”, Professor Václav Votruba is considered the founder of the theory of elementary particles in Czechoslovakia. In 2003, the Doppler Institute of the Faculty of Nuclear Physics and Physical Engineering of the Czech Technical University established the Václav Votruba Prize for the best doctoral thesis in the fields of theoretical physics.