Google Doodle honours Czech scientist Otto Wichterle today, who created the contact lens. Today is Otto Wichterle's 108th birth anniversary. Wichterle is seen carrying a contact lens on his index finger in the doodle. A ray of light going through an eyeball and a contact lens is also seen in the Google Doodle.
According to the website of the Contact Lens Museum in the United States, Wichterle manufactured the first four hydrogel contact lenses on Christmas Day in 1961, using a home-made apparatus fashioned with a children's construction kit, his son's bicycle dynamo, and a bell transformer.
He finished his patent application and produced over 100 lenses by spin casting within a few days after designing the initial iteration of the contact lens.
Unknown interesting facts about Otto Wichterle:
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Otto Wichterle was born in Moravia, Czech Republic (then Austria-Hungary), in 1913 and died at the age of 85 in the same town in 1998.
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He graduated from the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague, the son of a farm-machine factory owner and a small automobile plant owner. Czech Technical University was the name of the institution during the time. Wichterle had an interest in medicine as well.
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During World War II, the Gestapo imprisoned Wichterle for two months.
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He earned his bachelor's degree in 1936 and subsequently his PhD in organic chemistry from the Prague Institute of Chemical Technology in 1936. (ICT).
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During the 1950s, he worked as a professor at his alma mater while creating an absorbent and translucent gel for eye implants.
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Following the country's creation in 1993, he was chosen the first President of the Academy of the Czech Republic for his outstanding achievements as an inventor and researcher.
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In 1993, an asteroid was named after him later in his career. On September 1, 2006, a high school in Ostrava, Czech Republic (in the area of Poruba) was named after him.
