The Brno years of prof. Pavel Materna

This year prof. Pavel Materna celebrates his 85th birthday (born April 21st 1930 in Hněvkovice, a village near Ledeč n/Sáz). His "Brno years" began 1965 when he came to the department of philosophy of Masaryk University (then "University of J. E. Purkyně"). He became a candidate of sciences in 1957 (having defended the Thesis Zu einigen Fragen der modernen Definitionslehre in the Prague department of logic (prof. Zich) and having already published some articles). His colleagues soon recognized that he loved not only his theoretical research but also pedagogical activities. In Brno he defended the Thesis On Problems and became 'docent' (Assistant Professor). During the communist 'normalisation' was deprived of the possibility to do his pedagogical and theoretical work, he however unofficially collaborated with some linguists, including the Prague Sgall seminar. He was then essentially influenced by Transparent intensional logic (TIL) founded and developed by his friend Pavel Tichý, then professor in the Otago University in Dunedin (New Zealand), who has emigrated in sixties. Without the possibility to teach and work in the Brno university he went to Prague and began to work in a Design Institute in 1976. He tried to exploit his leisure time by studying and developing TIL. The Velvet Revolution caused that Materna began to work in the department of logic in Prague Institute of Philosophy of Academy of Sciences where he has worked up to now. He did not forget Brno however and Brno did not forget him. So he began to teach logic in Brno Masaryk University and – this time officially – make some research in TIL. In Brno he became professor of logic and has tutored some doctorands, one of which (J. Raclavský) is his pedagogical successor and another the highly successful Danish doctorand B. Jespersen, who did his PhD in Brno. So TIL began to be partially developed in Brno, and a fruitful collaboration with Ostrava (M. Duží) led to the situation where we can speak about the TIL (or Czech) school. Materna loved to collaborate with Slovak colleagues and many of them are active members of this school. Materna has authored some Czech and some English books (especially concerning the TIL theory of concepts) and has written many articles with Marie Duží and together with Jespersen and Duží this "Big Three" authored a Springer book Procedural Semantics fir Hyperintensional Logic (2010). He has been awarded three medals, one by the Ministry of education, one by Masaryk University, one medal was given to the Big Three for the mentioned Springer book. As a teacher Materna finished his work in Masaryk University in June 2015. Being a retiree he does not forget his Brno years and does not intend to stop working.