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August 22nd, 2008

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Burdens of the office beget rewards

Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic President Václav Pačes uses his post to push the country's scientists to greatness

By Paul Voosen
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
June 18th, 2008 issue

KURT VINION/THE PRAGUE POST

Pačes took advantage of 1968's eased restrictions to get a research position at the University of Chicago ? and then returned to more meager communist-era travel options.

PAST PRESENT

Czech scientists have made numerous and, during the past 50 years, often unsung contributions to science. Several notable researchers, all of whom served at the academy:
Jaroslav Heyrovský (1890-1967) Father of electro-analytical
chemistry, which uses electrical methods to analyze chemicals. Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1959
Eduard Čech (1893-1960) Mathematician specialized in
differential geometry and topology, the study of deformed space. Served as academy director in 1952
Václav Votruba (1909-90) Founder of modern Czech theoretical physics, mentoring several
generations of physicists
Otto Wichterle (1913-98) Chemist and inventor of the modern contact lens. Served as first
president of academy after 1989
Vít Kárník (1926-94) Geophysicist and seismologist who helped develop earthquake scale that became the basis for European seismic scale used worldwide

THE PAČES FILE

Title: President, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
Age: 66
Research fields: Genomics,
bioinformatics
Education: Biochemistry degree, Charles University, 1965; Ph.D., Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, 1968; D.Sc., Institute of Molecular Genetics, 1988
Family: Married, two sons

Like many people, Václav Pačes, the president of the Academy of Sciences, left Prague soon after the Soviet tanks rolled over the cobblestones of Wenceslas Square in 1968, ending the country’s fevered democratic dreams for a generation.

But, unlike many, Pačes quickly came back.

In 1968, Pačes was finishing his thesis on inhibiting protein synthesis at the academy. He rushed through his Ph.D. defense to take advantage of the travel liberties opened by the Prague Spring, opting for a one-year research position at the University of Chicago.

“I was lucky in a sense,” he says of the timing that allowed him to go west. “Before [1968] it would not have been possible, and a year later it was not possible.”

Meanwhile, Pačes’ wife, a geochemist, and his infant son went to McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, where Pačes joined them after one year. Their nuclear family reunited, the Pačeses were poised for careers in North America, the world’s most fertile scientific environment.

And then, at the end of 1970, they returned to Prague.

“We were both scientists, not really involved in politics,” Pačes says of their decision to return. “We had parents here, brothers and so on.”

Despite his disavowal of politics, Pačes’ rise through the ranks of the scientific community has meant that, perhaps more than any other researcher, his career has collided again and again with politicians, especially in his current role, which he has held for three years, overseeing the country’s most important scientific institution.

Like it or not — and, despite his pooh-poohing, one suspects Pačes does — the prestige of the presidential office comes with an excess of political burdens. Just over the past year, Pačes’ name arose as a possible presidential candidate and Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek named him to lead a controversial commission charting the country’s energy future.

Sitting in his enormous office, with its view of the National Theater across the street and portraits of past Czech science heroes on the wall, Pačes grows frustrated when talking of the commission. He’s wearing a green polo shirt inscribed with a DNA double helix, and the hot midday sun reflects off his bald head.

The energy commission is set to issue its final report later this month. It has been an ordeal for Pačes, who is trying to forge a consensus between parties diametrically opposed on their views of nuclear power.

“It is a very difficult job,” he says. “I must tell you, very difficult.”

Some days, when the money and politics get to be overwhelming, it must make the DNA sequencing of Pačes’ younger days seem far away, indeed.

Down with academicians

When Pačes and his wife returned to Prague, they picked up where they left off, Pačes joining the academy’s Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry while his wife returned to Charles University, where she remains a professor.

Life as a scientist under communism wasn’t so bad, Pačes says, “though there was a time when we almost couldn’t travel, which for a scientist is really bad. Lack of money is one thing, but lack of contact — the exchange of ideas — is very frustrating.”

Perhaps because of the caliber of his research, Pačes was able to work with little interference. Though he could never become a group leader because of his critiques of the regime, he was allowed to visit the University of Bristol in 1980, which had organized a course on DNA sequencing, a field then in its infancy.

Despite his democratic sympathies, Pačes found that his Western colleagues were even more susceptible to propaganda than scientists back home, believing Czechoslovakia’s people suffered from hunger or that no one could speak English.

“Propaganda in the West was much worse than propaganda in this country, because here no one believed the propaganda,” he says. “But, in the West, people believed. … In a sense, we were much better informed and more objective.”

Fresh from Bristol, Pačes’ lab became the first group in Czechoslovakia to map a complete genome, the genetic blueprint encoded in every strand of DNA. The lab then pioneered the use of bioinformatics, the application of computers and statistics to biochemistry.

While his research was fruitful, Pačes’ larger academic aspirations remained on hold. During the 1980s, the academy, which is composed of 53 research institutes united by a type of parliament, had come under the sway of the “academicians,” who were politically appointed communist sympathizers.

“They were not trusted,” Pačes says.

So, soon after the countrywide pivot point of 1989 arrived, the academicians were swept away and power returned to the institutes. The Institute of Molecular Genetics, which he had since joined, elected Pačes to the academy assembly. One of his teachers, Rudolf Zahradník, became the academy’s president in 1993, with Pačes serving as his vice president for four years.

The 1990s were a difficult time for the academy, which was saddled with a glut of moribund scientists and institutes producing research not up to international standards. Sweeping evaluations eventually ended up closing 22 institutes, with all their staffs fired.

“It was very tough,” Pačes says of that period. “But it improved the overall performance by a lot. But still not as much as I would wish.”

Pačes’ fired colleagues did not have a rough go of it, since they came onto the job market just as multinational companies came sweeping into the country, desperately looking for people fluent in English and German who were computer proficient. His former colleagues may have had to give up science, Pačes says, “but all of them certainly make more money than me now.”

Chasing excellence

Since his election in 2005, Pačes has had one goal for the academy: scientific excellence. “The academy should become a top scientific institution, at least in Europe,” he says. “We are not yet.” Compared with Germany’s Max Planck Institutes or the United Kingdom’s Medical Research Council, the academy falls short.

Unfortunately, the quickest path to excellence is paved by crowns, and Pačes finds much of his time is taken up securing funding from the government. According to Václav Hampl, the rector of Charles University, Pačes has strengthened the academy’s influence.

“He has done a lot for visibility of the academy and its already strong position in negotiations with the government about money,” Hampl says.

“The long-term funding of our universities is at about one-third to one-half of what is normal in [Western Europe],” Hampl adds. “This is the main bottleneck preventing universities from hiring the best talents in the world.”

With enough money, it should be no problem for the country to retain its best scientists. There were concerns that after 1990 there would be a significant brain drain, to the well-funded universities of the United States in particular. And, while many Czechs did leave, “they’ve started to return,” Pačes says.

“For instance, at my institute, we have new groups and leaders, Czechs who spent seven to 10 years at the best labs in the United States,” he says. “And they’ve come back. The thing is, you have to prepare proper conditions for them. We have to try and attract them.”

Pačes’ own sons are an example of the natural circulation of scientists. Both have followed in his footsteps and work at the academy: Jan, 41, studies bioinformatics while Ondřej, 32, is in organic chemistry. (Pačes’ own father was a surgeon.) They returned to the country after stints in the United States and Germany. When the academy president is your father, though, that could be expected.

In securing funding, Pačes often runs hard against the election-oriented blinders that encumber nearly every politician — it’s a Herculean task for them to see past the next four years. Because of this, many politicians hawk the idea of applied research, discoveries that can quickly be turned into a marketable drug or tech gadget.

“This is where they want to invest money,” Pačes says. “In my view this is a mistake. This should be funded by private companies with the help of public money. … The companies know what to research and what they want from research.”

Public money should instead focus on basic research, discovery for its own sake — not coincidentally the type of science conducted by the academy.

“The most precious thing that society can get from a scientist is his ideas,” Pačes says. The minute “someone tells the scientist what he or she should do, it is already limiting his brain potential, his ideas, his activity.”

Isle of rationalism

The Czech Republic could be fertile ground for science. Pačes considers the country to be “an island of rationalism” when compared with Poland, Germany’s Bavaria region, Austria or Slovakia, all of which are more religious. “This is good from one point of view,” he says, “[but] maybe not good for the society as a whole.”

Religion can still play a role in research, though, especially when fused with politics. Some members of the Christian Democratic Party disapprove of Pačes because he supports stem cell research, for example, including the use of embryonic stem cells.

In fact, several political parties take issue with Pačes, which is one reason he never took his possible presidential candidacy that seriously. As the Social Democrats searched for a candidate to oppose President Václav Klaus last year, Pačes’ name was repeatedly floated.

Pačes, who plans to return to the genetics institute after his four-year term is up, told the parties that he would only take the nomination if they could find no one else. As he expected, the nomination never came. All the minority parties had issues with him: the Communists because he is not against the radar and the Greens because he supports the use of genetically modified food.

The Green Party has caused Pačes much angst this year due to another political charge that came his way — the energy commission. Though he is hardly an expert in the field, Topolánek called and asked him to chair the committee, “and if the prime minister asks you, then it’s very difficult to say no.”

Each party (except the Social Democrats) nominated experts to the committee, and these experts mirror the policy points of their sponsors. All of the parties except the Greens favor nuclear power, which could include building two new reactors at Temelín, the nuclear power plant in south Bohemia.

“The problem is I have two Greens on this commission … so we will not really get a unified view and united opinion,” Pačes says. “That is something Topolánek expected and is maybe expecting, though I told him on several occasions, don’t expect this from us.”

With all the burdens it entails, Pačes is ready to pass on the office’s duties and return to his research. There’s much still to be done. He’s particularly interested in the genes of viral origin that humans have encoded in our DNA, along with comparisons of the human and chimpanzee genomes.

Paul Voosen can be reached at pvoosen@praguepost.com

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