Prošek was born in
Zlín on 23 September 1940. He graduated from the Faculty of Science of
Masaryk University in
Brno. He joined the Cartographic and Reproductive Institute in
Prague, and after his
compulsory military service in 1966, he began an internal postgraduate course in Brno in the field of
climatology. In the early 1970s, he got a one-year internship at
ETH Zurich. Between 1985 and 1990, he completed three expeditions to
Svalbard. In the 1990s, as an associate professor and later a professor, he completed two expeditions in
Antarctica, first on the
Polish station, then on the
Peruvian station. It was the limitations that resulted from the work on these stations that led Pavel Prošek and botanist
Josef Elster to the initiative to build a Czech Antarctic station. As part of the construction of the Antarctic station he visited Antarctica every year until the opening of the
Mendel Polar Station on 22 February 2007, and several times thereafter. In September 2020, he was awarded the . In June 2021, he received a commemorative plaque from the Czech Geographical Society for his outstanding contribution to Czech geography. Prošek died on 2 November 2025, at the age of 85. == References ==