The history of organic technology as a field of expertise was from the very beginning closely connected with chemical industry, which basically dictated the scope of research direction of Department of Organic Technology throughout its existence. The history of the department dates back to 1920 when it was established as the Department of Organic Technology and Technology of Explosives at VSCHTI. The first head of the department was Cyril Krauz whose field of expertise formed this early focus of department’s research. In the post-war era, František Šorm leaned towards the direction of chemistry of natural compounds, cooperation with the pharmaceutical industry and organic chemistry of silicone. After the establishment of Czechoslovakian Academy of Science in 1952, professor Šorm with several associated professors left to build the foundations of its Department of Chemistry. Professor Šorm’s successor at freshly independent University of Chemistry and Technology was Viktor Ettel. Once again the department returned to the basic research crucial for the development of chemical industry. Viktor Ettel had rich experience with the management of chemical factories and research. He led his workplace to basic technological research, chemistry of colours, pesticides, surfactants and other chemical specialities. During his time at the university, he published two-part book Organic technology that served for many years as a valuable source of information about the processes for the production of organic compounds. The book was mainly based on German chemical processes that were made public after the war, because the German chemical industry was considered one of the most advanced in Europe.
After Ettel’s unexpected death in 1964 the department was led by Vlastimil Růžička, Miroslav Zbirovský or Reiner Seifert. While Ettel and his co-workers were influenced in their work by the empirical description of many technological processes of that time, their successors had to deal with an extensive development of the chemical industry. Then more than ever it was necessary to focus the university education on more general process principles and their application based on organic and physical chemistry, catalysis or chemical engineering. Mainly from the initiative of Josef Pašek, the education of chemical technology was based on thorough understanding of selected examples of applied processes and their chemism, thermodynamic and catalysis. The result of this extensive research was the publication of Základní pochody průmyslové organické syntézy (Basic principles of industrial organic synthesis) (1993) by a collective of authors led by Josef Pašek and including Libor Červený, Milan Hronec, Ladislav Kurc, Josef Koubek a Jiří Volf. The textbook is used to this day not only at UCTP but also at universities in Pardubice or Bratislava.
During this time, also another specialization emerged at the Department of Organic Technology. Josef Horák (department head 1986-1991) focused on reaction kinetics and chemical-engineering approach to chemical processes. Prof. Horák was responsible for establishing the discipline of chemical reactors and their design. He also broadened the topics of mathematical modelling and the use of computational science in research and education. His well-known works include the description of multiple equilibria states of chemical reactors, the dynamic behaviour of catalysts or radical reactions system modelling. His experience was reflected in the textbook Design of Industrial Chemical Reactors from Laboratory Data written in collaboration with Josef Pašek. The textbook was published in English (1978), Czech (1980) and French (1981) and was used at many universities in the world. This discipline had numerous successors including names such as Jiří Hanika (later head of the Department of Chemical Processes at Czech Academy of Science) and Vratislav Tukač in the field of multiphase reactors; or Zdeněk Bělohlav, František Jiráček a Petr Kondelík in the field of optimization and modelling based on the laboratory data.
Together with Horák’s quantitative approach and focus on more general principles, the group around Josef Pašek promoted the process design. It was professor Pašek who contributed to the Horák’s textbook with many real reactor design from his practical realizations. His school of “process synthesis” based on the acquisition and composition of literature based, experimental and computational data became the foundation for novel technologically-implementational practice. Josef Pašek himself is the author of more than 50 implemented processes with yearly production volume of 25 billion Czech Crowns. His work was awarded with two State Awards (1969 and 1983) and the Czech Head (2004) confirming the achievements of the Department of Organic Technology. The technology of aniline production developed in Pašek’s group with the contribution of Bohumír Dvořák and many more is probably one of the largest processes implemented abroad that comes strictly only from the Czech scientific field. The production know-how and license in capacity of 270 000 tons/year was sold in 2003 to Japan-based company Tosoh. The work of this group had also wide theoretical impact. For example, Josef Koubek described in detail non-stationary kinetics and elucidated the “stop effect” proposed by J. Pašek. The “stop effect” together with the description of multiple states of chemical reactors (Horák) can be considered as the most important and revolutionary inventions of the Department in the theoretical field.
In the spirit of these principles, the department was involved in cooperation with lighter chemical and pharmaceutical industry that resulted in number of technological processes for chemical specialities. This field is nowadays represented by the group of Libor Červený (the head of department during 1991‑2009) that deals with the chemistry of perfumes, but with wide overlap into catalytical hydrogenation. The team lead by Libor Červený was awarded the National Award of ČSR for the Research and implementation of novel compounds for fat and pharmaceutical industry.
Described specializations directed the aim of the Department up to the 1990s when the department educated over 1000 engineers that often became renowned for their work in the Czech chemistry and chemical industry. The intensive focus on chemical and pharmaceutical industry and the industry of chemical specialities prevails to this day and is represented by a new generation of scientists including Petr Zámostný, Eliška Vyskočilová, Jarmila Zbytovská or Jiří Trejbal. The direction of porous structures description is studied by Pavel Čapek and Martin Veselý.