Abstract
Emanuel Purkyně - the first expert in water hygiene at the National Institute of Public Health The article deals with the life of a promising Czech scientist Emanuel Purkyně, MSc (1895-1929), a great- grandson of Jan Evangelista Purkyně, the renowned Czech biologist. Emanuel Purkyně graduated from the Faculty of Science, Charles University, in Prague, where he specialized in zoology.
Still as an undergraduate, he worked as an assistant at the National Museum, dedicating himself to paleozoology. After his graduation in 1921, he and his wife moved to the countryside in the region of České Budějovice to be farmers.
However, after 3 years of farming, they moved back to Prague and Emanuel Purkyně worked briefly at the Institute for Breeding Biology. After gaining the post in open competition, he entered the newly established National Institute of Public Health on January 1, 1926.
Soon he was awarded a 2-year Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in hydrobiology. His training at the Harvard Engineering School in the USA focused not only on comprehensive methods for drinking and waste water analysis, technical aspects of drinking water treatment and sewage treatment but also on medical parasitology and public health.
After his return to Czechoslovakia, Emanuel Purkyně continued his activities in the laboratory of the National Institute of Public Health. He was already considered as the Czech leading expert in the field of water hygiene when he died unexpectedly in October 1929 after a traffic accident.