Otakar Borůvka

Otakar Borůvka (10 May 1899 in Uherský Ostroh – 22 July 1995 in Brno) was a Czech mathematician best known today for his work in graph theory, long before this was an established mathematical discipline.

Borůvka was born in Uherský Ostroh, a town in Moravia (then in Austria-Hungary, later Czechoslovakia; today Czech Republic), the son of a school headmaster. He attended the grammar school in Uherské Hradiště beginning in 1910. In 1916, influenced by the ongoing World War I, he moved to the military school (Realschule) in Hranice, and later he enrolled into the military technical academy in Mödling near Vienna.

When the war ended, Borůvka returned to Uherské Hradiště, finished his studies in 1918 at the Gymnasium there, and became a student at the Imperial Czech Technical University of Franz Joseph, in Brno, initially studying civil engineering. In 1920, Masaryk University opened in Brno, and Borůvka also began taking courses there. He became an assistant to Mathias Lerch at Masaryk in 1921, but Lerch died in 1922; his position at Masaryk was taken by Eduard Čech, whom Borůvka also assisted, earning his doctorate in 1923.

At Čech's suggestion, Borůvka visited Élie Cartan in Paris from 1926 to 1927. He earned his habilitation from Masaryk University in 1927, and (turning down an offer from the University of Zagreb) he became a docent there in 1928. He continued to travel abroad through the late 1920s and early 1930s, to Cartan in Paris again as well as to Wilhelm Blaschke in Hamburg. He was promoted to assistant professor at Masaryk in 1934, given a chair in 1940, and made an ordinary professor in 1946.

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