Prof. Jiří Čtyroký received a medal from the Czech Academy of Sciences for his contributions to the physical sciences

Ernst Mach Medal of Honor for Merit in Physical Sciences

Prof. Jiří Čtyroký, DrSc., who received the Ernst Mach Medal on September 4 at the Czech Academy of Sciences headquarters on Národní Street, is an internationally recognized expert in the field of integrated optics. He introduced this field at the Institute of Photonics and Electronics of the Czech Academy of Sciences in the 1970s and has been actively involved in it ever since. He focuses on the physical principles of photonic structures in integrated optics, their design and characterization, and systematically develops methods for their numerical analysis and modeling. He has also contributed to the development of optical communications.

Significant achievements of Jiří Čtyroký

Among his most significant achievements is a detailed analysis of the properties of anisotropic optical waveguides in LiNbO₃ crystals, which form the basis of the most widely used fast electro-optical modulators, i.e., converters of electrical information into optical signals, for optical communications.

In the 1990s, he became a member of the permanent organizing committee of the prestigious European Conference on Integrated Optics (ECIO), and in 2003 he was entrusted with organizing it in Prague, the first time it had been held in a former Eastern Bloc country. He is educating a new generation of technicians and lectures at the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague. He was a long-standing member of the Scientific Council of the Academy of Sciences (2007-2025), serving as its chairman from 2011 to 2017. His colleague from his years on the Scientific Council, RNDr. Antonín Fejfar, CSc., delivered a laudatory speech in which he called Prof. Čtyroký a “gentleman of science”.

Other achievement

Jiří Čtyroký worked at our institute in the 1960s as a student in the quantum electronics team, where he collaborated on the development of MASER (contemporary footage of this device can be found in the documentary film “The first laser eye surgery in Czechoslovakia”) and joined as an employee in 1974, when he was tasked with developing an acousto-optic deflector for a laser beam. You can find his memories of his first independent task on page 144 of the JMO (Fine Mechanics and Optics) magazine – a special double issue dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the ÚFE. It is a story about what can be achieved if one wants to get to the bottom of things and “does not just do one’s duty.” His approach inspired not only his colleagues at our institute, but also colleagues in Turnov at the current Crytur and at the Institute of Plasma Physics – TOPTEC. In an incredibly short time, they had a functional product ready.

You can read more about Jiří Čtyroký, who is a member of the Fiber Lasers and Nonlinear Optics research department, here.

Congratulations to Jiří Čtyroký on winning the medal!