The František Pošepný Honorary Medal for Merit in the Geological Sciences
The František Pošepný Honorary Medal
for Merit in the Geological Sciences
awarded by the Czech Academy of Sciences
This honour was established by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences on January 12, 1967 as an Honorary Plaquette for outstanding scientific achievement in the field of geology. Since the second half of the year 1995, it has been awarded by the Czech Academy of Sciences as an Honorary Medal.
František Pošepný (1837–1895) is the best known representative of Czech geologists active in the second half of the 19th century. He is generally considered a classic geologist in the field of deposit beds and one of the founders of the modern theory of ore deposits. He was the first who defined metasomatosis as a significant deposit forming process.
His work consists of over one hundred scientific papers, among which are extensive monographs which serve up to day as a pattern in scientific approach to the basic problems of deposit geology. The best known is the monograph entitled “The Genesis of Ore Deposits,” which placed the classification of ore deposits on a genetic foundation for the first time. This work has made him famous. F. Pošepný was apppointed an honorary member of the leading American organisation of deposit geologists and engineers, the American Institute of Mining Engineers in Chicago.
The F. Pošepný medal was designed by academic sculptor and medallist Milan Knobloch, a student of Prof. J. Lauda and Prof. O. Španiel.