From the Biographical dictionary of the Czech lands

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​"He was born into the family of the physician Otakar F. (1852–1915) and Barbora, née Danešová (1867–1971); his brother was the politician and publicist Otakar F. Jr. (1884–1941). F. graduated from the Academic Gymnasium in Prague in 1911, studied medicine at the Czech Medical Faculty, where he graduated in 1917, then went to the front. After the war, he completed a study stay in Paris (A. Prénant). Already at the faculty, he worked as a demonstrator at the Institute of Biology.

 

After returning from France, he habilitated in 1920 under O. Srdínek in histology and embryology. In 1921, he accepted a full professorship at the newly founded university in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he built the institutes of histology and embryology. In 1922 he was appointed an extraordinary professor at Comenius University in Bratislava, where he worked until 1939 as head of the Institute of General Biology (1922–27) and the Institute of Histology and Embryology (1927–38), and from 1929 also as head of the Institute of Anatomy.

 

He became a full professor in 1927, and his venia legendi was extended to normal anatomy in 1931. In 1930/31 he served as dean of the faculty. In the interwar period, he was one of the most important figures who built Comenius University. After the establishment of the Slovak State (1939), he had to leave for Prague, where he was head of the Institute of Histology and Embryology of the Faculty of Medicine of Charles University until 1941.

 

He worked as a dissector at the Vinohrady Hospital. During the Prague Uprising, he devoted himself to treating the wounded in the fight for the Prague radio. After the war, he returned to the Faculty of Medicine. In 1948 he was first relieved of his duties as head of the institute, but in 1949 he was again appointed its head. From 1954 he headed the Department of Histology and Embryology. He retired in early 1962. His wife was the doctor Eleonora, née Rebensteigrová, with whom he had a daughter and two sons, of whom Zdeněk Frankenberger-Daneš (* 25. 8. 1920, Prague) became a professor of geophysics in the USA.

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He created an extensive body of work, numbering more than two hundred works. It included not only medical fields from histology to embryology to normal anatomy, but also natural science disciplines, such as systematic zoology, zoogeography (he was introduced to it by his mother's half-brother, professor of geography at Charles University, Jiří V. Daneš), ecology, paleontology, and anthropology.

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From his high school studies, under the influence of JF Babor, he devoted himself to malacology. He dedicated his first publication to the morphology of fusiformes and molluscs in the Bohemian Forest. From 1914, he published in German and Austrian professional journals. He wrote thirty articles on recent and fossil molluscs from the Czech lands, Dalmatia and the Caucasus, their systematics, morphology, anatomy, histology, evolution, zoogeography and paleozoogeography. He maintained contacts and debated with foreign researchers HA Pilsby, H. v. Ihering, CR Boettger and others. He published articles on fossil molluscs from the Czech Tertiary, in 1912 he attempted to systematics the Tachea Leach group with the classification of fossil forms among recent ones, in 1914 he compared a new Czech find of the genus Clausilia with a form known from the Oligocene from Hochheim in the Rhineland.

 

In 1916, he was the first Czech scientist to comment on Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift (1912). In the following period, he paid attention to comparative embryology and anthropology. Among F.'s valued works were the Brief Textbook of Histology (1948) and the Atlas of Microscopic Human Anatomy (1951, with K. Mazancek). The General Biology Textbook for Physicians, which he prepared as an author or co-author, became a basic tool during the several decades from the establishment of the field before the First World War until the 1960s. F.'s works on the history of the life sciences did not lose their importance; he dedicated a monograph to the Enlightenment physician and naturalist J.K.A. Boháč (1951).

 

He also made a significant contribution to the deepening of Purkyně's research. He was a member of learned and professional societies, e.g. KČSN, Šafařík's Learned Society (co-founder), Czechoslovak Mammalological Society (chairman), Czechoslovak Entomological Society (chairman), Czechoslovak Medical Society JE Purkyně (honorary member), Association des Anatomistes or Académie Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences (corresponding member). He also played an irreplaceable role in the so-called Purkyně Commission. He edited the professional journals Naše věda, Biologické listy, Acta anatomica, Československá morfologie , etc.

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Michal V. Šimůnek, Pavel Vlašimský

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Work
 

Selection: Soft-bodied fauna of Šumava, in: Bulletin of the Natural History Club in Prostějov for 1910, pp. 91–112;

 

Systematic review of recent and fossil Tachea, in: Proceedings of the Natural History Club in Prague for 1911, 1912, pp. 67–78;

 

Analytical review of Czech spindle worms (Clausilia Drap.), in: Bulletin of the Natural History Club in Prostějov for 1912, 15, 1912, pp. 37–60;

 

Die Clausilien des bohmischen Tertiärs, in: Nachrichtsblatt der Deutschen Malakozoologischen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main) 46, 1914, no. 4, pp. 155–162;

 

Czech malacozoology. Historical and programmatic outline, in: ČNM 89, 1915, pp. 203–207 and 343–348;

 

Family relationships of molluscs of our Tertiary period and Wegener's theory of the formation of continents, in: ibid. 90, 1916, pp. 341–348 and 427–435;

 

On the knowledge of the Dalmatian Zonite species, in: Nachrichtsblatt der Deutschen malakozoologischen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main) 49, 1917, pp. 24–27;

 

Fauna of the Doupovských hor. Mollusca, in: ČNM 94, 1920, pp. 52–57;

 

On the cave isopod Mesoniscus graniger Friv. from Domice, in: Věstník KČSN 1939, 20, pp. 1–12;

 

On the origin of man, 1941;

 

Phylum: Mollusca – Mollusca, in: Klíč zvíreny ČSR 1, 1954, pp. 327 to 369;

 

Anthropology of Old Slovakia, Bratislava 1935;

 

Embryology, 1936 (with J. Florian); Anthropological Studies from Slovakia, Bratislava 1936;

 

On the Origin of Man, 1941;

 

TH Huxley, 1947;

 

Basics of Human Embryology, 1948;

 

Purkyňa's Lectures on Embryology 100 Years Ago, 1950;

 

Comparative Embryology and Phylogeny, 1955;

 

Fauna of the Czech Republic (vol. 14), 1959;

 

General Biology, 1957 (with B. Krajník);

 

General Biology, 1960;

 

General Biology, 1962 (with B. Sekla);

 

Embryology, 1965 (reedition 1967–71, 1986);

 

Anthropology, 1967 (with H. Mala et al.)."