Dioniz Blaskovic

Born Aug. 2, 1913, in Jablonec. Czech microbiologist and virologist. Foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1966), the New York Academy of Sciences, and the Leopoldine German Academy (German Democratic Republic).

After graduating from the medical department of the Slovak University in Bratislava (1939), Blaškovió worked until 1946 as an assistant lecturer in the Institute of Hygiene of the same university. From 1947 to 1950 he directed the microbiology department of the State Institute of Public Health. From 1950 to 1953 he headed the Slovak Institute of Biology. In 1953 he became director of the Institute of Virology of the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences. From 1965 to 1970 he was a member of the presidium of the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences. Blaškovič’s field is general and medical virology. In the light of E. N. Pavlovskii’s doctrine on the natural nidality of infectious diseases, he investigated the circulation of pathogenic viruses in nature (the causative agents of influenza and tick-borne encephalitis), the filterable forms of pathogenic bacteria, and so forth. He won the State Prize of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (1951). He was awarded the Order of Labor of the Slovak National Uprising Second Class and the J. Purkinje and M. Planck medals.