Top 20 most important and famous people from Czech Republic

Painter, illustrator and graphic artist who lived in Paris during the Art Nouveau period

Writer, author of War with the Newts and R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), he introduced the word robot

Writer, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Writer, author of the short story The Metamorphosis and novels The Trial and The Castle

Playwright and screenwriter, known for his screenplays of Brazil, Empire of the Sun, Billy Bathgate and Shakespeare in Love

Writer, known for his novel The Fate of the Good Soldier Švejk during the World War

Theologian and philosopher who became a Church reformer, a key predecessor to Protestantism, and a seminal figure in the Bohemian Reformation

Politician, the most influential person of the Czech National Revival, called Father of the Nation

Biologist and friar, his experiments conducted between 1856 and 1863 established many of the rules of heredity

Politician, founder of Czechoslovakia, who served as first president

Chemist and inventor of the polarographic method, father of the electroanalytical method and winner of Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1959 for his invention and development of the polarographic methods of analysis

Biochemists, winner of Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1947 for their discovery of how the glucose derivative glycogen is broken down and resynthesized in the body for use as a store and source of energy

Director of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, two times winner of Academy Award

Composer who contributed to the formation of late XVIII century classicism in music

Composer known for his opera The Bartered Bride and his symphonic cycle Má vlast (My Fatherland)

Composer of Káťa Kabanová and The Cunning Little Vixen

Composer, who frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravia and Bohemia, following the Romantic-era nationalist example of his predecessors

Footballer, winner of Ballon d'Or in 2003, legend of Lazio and Juventus

Female tennis player, winner of 18 Grand Slam single titles

Long distance runner, winner of 4 Gold Olympic medals, named Czech Locomotive