Bohuslav Hostinský

Bohuslav Hostinský (5 December 1884 – 12 April 1951) was a Czech mathematician and theoretical physicist.

Early life and family Hostinský was born on 5 December 1884 in the New Town quarter of Prague in Bohemia, Austria-Hungary. His father Otakar Hostinský was a musicologist and professor of aesthetics at Charles University. Bohuslav Hostinský was the eldest of four siblings.

He married Emilie Veselíková (1883–?) in Královské Vinohrady on 19 July 1910. According to the police archive, they lived in Královské Vinohrady. They had two children, the daughter Věra and the son Zdeněk, a chess player and professor of Brno University of Technology.

Studies After graduating from secondary school, Bohuslav Hostinský studied mathematics and physics at the Faculty of Arts of Prague's Charles University. There in 1907 he received his doctorate and in the same year he became an adjunct professor at the gymnasium in Nový Bydžov, from where in April 1908 he transferred to the gymnasium in Roudnice nad Labem and eventually to Prague's Gymnasium in Kodaňská street. For the academic year 1908–09 he studied at the University of Paris in Paris; his time there profoundly influenced his research.

Career In November 1911 he passed the formal examination for the acceptance of his habilitation thesis at Charles University; the examination committee included Karel Petr, Jan Sobotka, and Vincenc Strouhal.

Bohuslav Hostinský was four times an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians — in Cambridge, England in 1912, in Strasbourg in 1920, in Bologna in 1928, and in Zurich in 1932. He published about 140 papers and several monographs.

From the establishment of the Faculty of Science in Masaryk University until 1948 (with an interruption from 1934 to 1939), he was the editor of the Spisů (research journal) published by this faculty. He was several times dean of the Faculty of Science and from 1929 to 1930 rector. He was a member of many scientific societies and in 1933 he was elected a member extraordinarius of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. He actively participated in the activities of the Brno chapter of the Union of Czech mathematicians and physicists; in the difficult years from 1942 to 1945 he was the chair of the Brno chapter.

Selected publications Articles

Monographs and books (Differential geometry of curves and surfaces) (Mechanics of rigid bodies)

with Vito Volterra: