Josef Prokop Pražák (22 June 1870 – 15 July 1904) was a
Bohemia
Bohemia ( ; ; ) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. In a narrow, geographic sense, it roughly encompasses the territories of present-day Czechia that fall within the Elbe River's drainage basin, but historic ...
n
ornithologist
Ornithology, from Ancient Greek ὄρνις (''órnis''), meaning "bird", and -logy from λόγος (''lógos''), meaning "study", is a branch of zoology dedicated to the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related discip ...
. Because of problems in his research including publication of false information and the submission of stolen specimens with fake data, much of his work remains under a cloud of uncertainty.
ed to Edinburgh again, he was declared a Doctor of Natural Sciences there. After this, he engaged in further scientific activity in the natural science institutes of this university and achieved a distinguished name there, and was offered a professorship in the college of Calcutta, India. But military duty prevented him from this mission, as a reserve officer he had to return home and therefore declined the position. He then settled in Prague, where he took the post of prefect at Straka's Noble Academy and taught French and English there. At the same time, however, he continued to study privately and prepared for publication a comprehensive English book on ungulates. In order to have more time for this work, he left his posi
Life
Born in
Hořiněves he spent much of his life in Bohemia. He was educated at gymnasiums in Nový Bydžov and Hradec Králové and received a doctorate from the University of Vienna. He received a doctorate in law from Bordeaux. He then became an assistant professor at the University of Edinburgh between 1896 and 1897 and researched the horse family and described the subspecies ''Equus quagga zambeziensis'' in a manuscript of 1898 which was cited by
Trouessart who also noted the author for the name ''zambeziensis'' as Pražák. He was offered a position in a college in Calcutta but military duty prevented him from taking it up. He then settled in Prague and taught French and English at Straka's Academy.
Pražák published numerous works in ornithology but a lot of his work was doubted even during his lifetime. His records of the birds of
Galicia included rarities and included a mass of collections that simply could not have been collected in the time period mentioned and it was noted by
von Tschusi and
Lorenz von Liburnau that there was no way he could have collected in some of the places in which he obtained some specimens and has subsequently come to be recognized as fraudulent. He was requested to respond to the statements made against his observations by Lorenz von Liburnau and he failed to respond. He described at least two fake species of bird including ''Vanellus grisescens'' which he claimed was collected by Richard Materna in northern Chile and ''Trochalopteron hennickei'' supposedly collected by Jaworowski from the Hunan Province of China. He also contributed a paper on bird migration with arrival dates for species in eastern Bohemia. He published on the birds of Bohemia with
Karel Kněžourek. His data covered more than a hundred years and this was submitted to the Hungarian journal ''Aquila'' but was suspected to be fraudulent and not published. Like
Richard Meinertzhagen
Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, CBE, DSO (3 March 1878 – 17 June 1967) was a British soldier, intelligence officer, and ornithologist. He had a decorated military career spanning Africa and the Middle East. He was credited with creating an ...
he too stole specimens from museums and resubmitted them with altered labels. Ernst Bauernfeind, a curator at the Natural History Museum at Vienna (
Naturhistorisches Museum Wien
The Natural History Museum Vienna () is a large natural history museum located in Vienna, Austria.
The NHM Vienna is one of the largest museums and non-university research institutions in Austria and an important center of excellence for all matt ...
, NHMW) found that a Bohemian specimen of ''Prunella montanella'' (NHMW 11423) that Pražák submitted matched details to a specimen collected by
Dybowski at Kultuk, Lake Baikal, which had gone missing.
Otto Kleinschmidt
Otto Kleinschmidt (13 December 1870 – 25 March 1954) was a German Ornithology, ornithologist, Theology, theologist and pastor. He was also an artist and taxidermist who produced specimens and illustrations of birds for his writings. He was crit ...
, who had corresponded with and had noted various inaccuracies in information provided by Pražák, concluded in his obituary that the latter suffered from kleptomania and that he was possibly mentally ill. Pražák returned from Edinburgh, got married and taught in private schools for a while and briefly took part in political agitations. He died of tuberculosis and few ornithological journals covered his death.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Prazak, Josef Prokop
1870 births
1904 deaths
Czech ornithologists
Academic scandals
People from Hradec Králové District
20th-century deaths from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis deaths in Austria-Hungary
Scientists from Austria-Hungary