Marie Zdeňka Baborová-Čiháková

Marie Zdeňka Baborová-Čiháková was the first female Czech botanist and zoologist. Baborová was born in Prague to a school teacher's family and learned many languages at a young age. She studied at the Minerva secondary school before studying natural sciences at the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. She studied zoology and wrote her dissertation on fat bodies in the arthropods and in 1901 became the first woman to be awarded a doctorate. An older brother Josef Florián Babor was also a physician and zoologist at the University. Josef had inspired her own studies but she worked under Frantisek Vejdovsky (1849-1939). She contributed entries on infusoria and protozoa for Otto's Encyclopedia. Baborová married Stanislav Ćihak in 1903. She cut back on her studies in 1906 after the birth of her daughter.