Karel Čapek

Karel Čapek was born in Czechoslovakia in 1890.  He was a well known journalist, playwright, essayist, publisher and art critic.

Čapek was very vocal against the Nazis and of Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland.

In 1938, the Gestapo named him Czechoslovakia's Public Enemy #2.  Yet he never fled the country.  A few months later he died of double pneumonia.

Although he wrote in many different genres, both fiction and non-fiction, today he is best known for science fiction.  His biggest international success was Rossum's Universal Robots.  Thanks to this play he gave the world the word "robot".  Who would have thought that "robot" was a Czech word?