Jiří (Jirka) Matoušek (10 March 1963 – 9 March 2015) was a Czech mathematician working in computational geometry and algebraic topology. He was a professor at Charles University in Prague and the author of several textbooks and research monographs.

Biography

Matoušek was born in Prague. In 1986, he received his Master's degree at Charles University under Miroslav Katětov. From 1986 until his death he was employed at the Department of Applied Mathematics of Charles University, holding a professor position since 2000. He was also a visiting and later full professor at ETH Zurich. In 1996, he won the European Mathematical Society prize and in 2000 he won the Scientist award of the Learned Society of the Czech Republic. In 1998 he was an Invited Speaker of the International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin. He became a fellow of the Learned Society of the Czech Republic in 2005. Matoušek's paper on computational aspects of algebraic topology won the Best Paper award at the 2012 ACM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms. Aside from his own academic writing, he has translated the popularization book Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction by Timothy Gowers into Czech. He was a supporter and signatory of the Cost of Knowledge protest. Matoušek died in 2015, aged 51. In 2021, a lecture hall at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, was named after him.

Books