Zsolt StanÃk – Curriculum Vitae
ZS was born in Košice in Eastern Slovakia in what then was Czechoslovakia. His mother gave him the name Zsolt after she was struck by the love poems of Hungarian poet Hársany Zsolt. His father who had not been informed almost failed to identify his new-born son when he came to visit at the maternity hospital.
The first sixteen years of his life were spent with his parents in the mining village of Baňa Lucia (then known as Luciabaňa) in the picturesque valley at the foot of the Slovak Red Mountains. The mountain brook Borzó which runs through the village also delineates the direction of the only road leading in and out of the village. On all three sides the village is surrounded by lovely mixed forests dominated by mount Trohanka.
In 1959 ZS graduated from grammar school in Košice and was admitted to the Faculty of Technical and Nuclear Physics of the Czech Technical University in Prague. He fell in love with all that was nuclear and so decided to extend his knowledge by attending a two year post-graduate study course in nuclear chemistry and dosimetry which he successfully completed in 1978.
He started out as a research worker at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and then found a new challenge: nuclear information. The area which was to become his life-long involvement and mission. He worked at the Nuclear Information Centre (UJI) in Prague until moving for Vienna where he became information specialist at the International Nuclear Information System (INIS) of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
After five years he returned to the UJI where for the next six years he was its Director and INIS Liaison Officer for the Czechoslovak Republic.
Between 1993 and retirement ZS held the position of Information Manager at the IAEA.
At present, he lives in Alhaurin de la Torre, Spain. He has two children, Danny and Lucie, three grandchildren, Anetka David and Natálka and two great grandchildren, Matěj and Marek.
To learn more about Zsolt StanÃk, please visit his website at www.stanik.name and www.kosmas.cz