Dr. Bohuslav Ostadal, MD, DSc, was born on January 28, 1940. His university education started in 1957 at the Faculty of Pediatric Medicine of the Charles University in Prague where he graduated in 1963. Since the very beginning, Ostadal´s main area of research has been focused on the ontogenetic development of heart structure and function. Already his early experimental studies on developing myocardial blood supply belong to landmark papers in the field that achieved well-deserved attention. His laboratory was among the first to demonstrate the important ontogenetic differences in cardiac sensitivity to various pharmacological agents. In a series of papers he investigated developmental changes in myocardial responses to acute oxygen deprivation, mechanisms of increased ischemic tolerance of the immature heart, and protective effects of preconditioning and chronic hypoxia. He has also been deeply concerned with late cardiovascular consequences of risk factors acting during early phases of ontogenetic development, the phenomenon known as fetal programming. Recently, he became particularly interested in differences of ischemic tolerance between hearts of males and females, the topic which appears to gain increasing attention of both experimental and clinical cardiologists. His group described for the first time (already in 1984) that the female myocardium is more tolerant to oxygen deprivation as compared with males. He published more than 280 scientific papers, 2 books and was editor of 6 monographs.


Ostadal also became deeply involved in the organization of cardiovascular research and education on both national and international scale. He was among founding members of the Committee of Experimental Cardiology which has organized annual scientific meetings of Czech and Slovak researchers and clinicians continuously since 1972. In the early period of transformation after 1989, he served for five years as a director of the Institute of Physiology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. In 2000, he created Centre for Cardiovascular Research based on a project involving more than 100 researchers from several theoretical and clinical institutions in Prague. In addition, he was the President of the Executive Committee of the Postgraduate Education in Biomedicine at the Charles University in Prague and a member of several scientific boards; he is vice-president of the Czech Medical Academy.  He served as the Council member of the International Society for Heart Research (1993-1998) and President of the International Academy of Cardiovascular Sciences (2015–2018). Ostadal was the main organizer of many local and international scientific conferences, the biggest one and the most successful being the World Congress of the International Society for Heart Research in 1995, which is still remembered with joy by its participants. For many years he served as the Editor-in-Chief of Physiological Research and Editor-in-Chief of Experimental and Clinical Cardiology and a member of Editorial Boards of another five journals.


He is a Fellow of the Czech Medical Academy, Czech Learned Society, International Society for Heart Research and the International Academy of Cardiovascular Sciences. Ostadal has received numerous awards and distinctions from scientific societies, e.g. Medals of Honor J.E. Purkyne (2000) and G.J. Mendel (2015) of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Libensky Medal of the Czech Society of Cardiology (2010), Memorial Medal of the Charles University in Prague (1998), Award “Nummum Academiae Memorialem Tribut” of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (2000) and Medal of Merit of the International Academy of Cardiovascular Sciences (2018).