Beautiful Women

The International Coordinating Committee of Czechs Abroad and the Committee of the Czech Senate recently awarded the Distinguished Woman of 2009 Prize to five remarkable Czech women, namely to Eva Hahn, Hana Sladkova-Kozeluhova, Mathilde Nostitz, Jarmila Jancarikova and Hana Garzanicova. Even though all of them are remarkable and prominent, I was particularly impressed by the last two women:

JARMILA JANCARIKOVA of USA is an internationally known expert in the field of macromolecular crystallography. She was born in Brno, studied at Charles University, left her homeland in 1968 and eventually settled in Austin, Texas where she started her work at the University of Texas. Her most important achievement is the so-called “Jaru Screening”— her new and original method of screening crystals. This method enables the scientists to develop new medicines in a very short time, for example those used to treat AIDS.

HANA GARZANICOVA (81), poetess and teacher, lived many years in Australia where she brought up her six children. She received several prizes of the International Poetry Society of the USA. After November 1989 she returned to her homeland and became a member of the Czech Poets Association. For her poetry in English she was named the “Poet of 1997” in the United States and her name is included in the International Hall of Fame in Philadelphia. She published many collections of poems. The most recent one is called “Poesie prirody aneb Kde domov muj” (Poetry of Nature or Where is My Home.).