** If you can read Czech, we need you! Help us and other digital volunteers to finish transcribing Shimek's first volume of notes from his trip to Europe on the eve of World War I. **
Practicing a new language on your first trip to Europe? Surveyor-turned-naturalist Bohumil Shimek was working on Czech when he traveled from Iowa to Prague as an exchange professor of botany in 1914. Just before open hostilities broke out in what became known as the Great War or World War I. A son of Czech immigrants, Shimek came to be well known for his contributions to the field of botany in North America - over 205,000 plant specimens. Take note, he writes in English and Czech! English speakers may want to start here, a few pages in. You also might enjoy this blog post about his trip.
** If you can read Czech, we need you! Help us and other digital volunteers to finish transcribing Shimek's first volume of notes from his trip to Europe on the eve of World War I. **
Practicing a new language on your first trip to Europe? Surveyor-turned-naturalist Bohumil Shimek was working on Czech when he traveled from Iowa to Prague as an exchange professor of botany in 1914. Just before open hostilities broke out in what became known as the Great War or World War I. A son of Czech immigrants, Shimek came to be well known for his contributions to the field of botany in North America - over 205,000 plant specimens. Take note, he writes in English and Czech! English speakers may want to start here, a few pages in. You also might enjoy this blog post about his trip.
Bohumil Shimek (1861-1937) studied civil engineering at the State University of Iowa (SUI), where he received a C.E. degree in 1883 and an M.S. degree in 1902. He served as railroad and county surveyor for Johnson County, Iowa, 1883-1885, and taught sciences at Iowa City High School, 1885-1888. From 1888 until 1890, Shimek was an instructor in zoology at the University of Nebraska. From 1890 to 1932, he taught botany at SUI and served as the head of the Department of Botany, 1914-1919. In 1914, Shimek was an exchange professor at Charles University in Prague. Shimek was also Curator of the Herbarium, SUI, 1895-1937; President of the Iowa State Academy of Sciences, 1904-1905; a geologist for the Iowa State Geological Survey, 1908-1929; and Director of the Lakeside Laboratory, Lake Okoboji, Iowa. Shimek's interest in the natural sciences and geology covered many areas, but he was mostly known for his study of loess, loess fossils, and fossil malacology in Iowa and the prairie states. He was the author of the term, Nebraskan, which is used to describe the layer underneath the Aftonian interglacial deposits
