Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences
Historian · Biochemist · President Emeritus
“Czechmate is not just the title of my memoir. It is an attitude — to face challenges head-on and not give up, even when it seems you are in a checkmate position.”
Author or editor of more than 55 scholarly volumes on Czech and Slovak America, and of more than thirty books and handbooks in biochemistry, nutrition and food science; formerly a research biochemist at the National Cancer Institute and a director of research at the US Agency for International Development.
Mladá Boleslav · Est. 1930 · Washington, D.C.
95th Anniversary Tributes
Jiří Křešťan’s essay “Ten Lives of Miloslav Rechcigl” and a Radio Prague conversation marking the occasion.
55+
Scholarly volumes catalogued
30+
Scientific books & handbooks
50+
Years of service to the SVU
16
Medals & distinctions
A dual legacy
Cornell 1951–58; postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health; a decade in the Laboratory of Biochemistry at the National Cancer Institute working on cancer biochemistry and enzyme turnover; then Special Assistant for Nutrition and Health, and twenty-seven years managing federal research at the Agency for International Development.
More than fifty years with the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, twice its President; founder of the National Heritage Commission and instigator of the Czech & Slovak American Archival Consortium; author of the first systematic surveys of Czech-American historic sites and archival holdings.
Chosen milestones
30 July 1930
Son of Marie and Miloslav Rechcígl, a miller and farmer from Chocnějovice and the youngest deputy elected to Parliament during the First Republic. Grammar school in Mladá Boleslav; youth spent at the family mill near the Bohemian Paradise.
1950
After the Communist coup d’état he escaped to the West and settled in the United States, where he has lived since.
1951 – 1958
B.S., M.N.S., and Ph.D. degrees, specializing in biochemistry, nutrition, physiology, and food science. He also lectured at Cornell in the second half of the 1950s.
Late 1950s – 1960s
Two years as a postdoctoral research fellow, then a decade on the staff of the Laboratory of Biochemistry at the National Cancer Institute, working on cancer biochemistry and enzyme turnover in vivo.
1960 – 1962
The beginning of more than fifty years of service to the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences.
1962 – 1968
Organized both congresses and edited their proceedings as The Czechoslovak Contribution to World Culture (1964) and Czechoslovakia Past and Present (1968, two volumes).
1968 – 1970
One year of training in research management, grants administration, and science policy, followed by appointment as Special Assistant for Nutrition and Health in the Health Services and Mental Health Administration.
1970 onward
Nutrition Advisor, then Chief of the Research and Institutional Grants Division, later Director responsible for AID research — some twenty-seven years managing federal research.
Recognition
Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences · 1991
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Czech Republic · 1997
Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the United States · 1998
President Václav Havel · 1999
SVU Prague Chapter · 2002
University of West Bohemia, Plzeň · 2002
Selected works
AuthorHouse, Bloomington, IN · 2013
AuthorHouse, Bloomington, IN · 2016
Author’s Tranquility Press, Atlanta, GA · 2024
Author’s Tranquility Press, Atlanta, GA · 2024
