Czech contributions to European cardiology - The European Heart Journal's perspective

Even when looking from outside, cardiology has an impressive tradition in the Czech Republic. Indeed, the Czech Society of Cardiology was already founded on December 13, 1929, i.e. decades before Cardiology became a visible medical specialty in many other countries. As such the Czech Society of Cardiology is the second oldest in Europe, just after the German Society of Cardiology which was founded in 1927. Of note, the European Society of Cardiology was founded only after the Second World War, i.e. on September 2, 1950 after representatives from 14 countries, i.e. Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Yugoslavia had prepared statutes and had elected a provisional Executive Committee that included C. Laubry (France) as Honorary President, Gustav Nylin (Sweden) as President, and D.E. Belford (UK), E. Coehlo (Portugal) and Jean Lenegre (France) as Vice-Presidents. The first president of the Czech Society of Cardiology, acting from 1929–1938 for almost a decade, was Prof. Vaclav Libensky from Prague. In 1933, he organized the first international cardiology congress in Prague. As president, he was followed by 12 eminent Czech cardiologist (Table 1). Most recently, the society is led by Prof. Petr Widimsky (2011–15), an internationally recognized interventional cardiologist. Of