The Heyrovský family has been one of the leading intellectual families in the Bohemian lands since the 19th century. Leopold Heyrovský (1852–1924) was professor of Roman law at the Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague, the father of the Nobel Prize winner for chemistry Jaroslav (1890–1967) /and the lawyer and entomologist Leopold (1892–1976)/. Jaroslav's son Michael (1932–2017) was a prominent electrochemist, working in the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences /after 1993 in the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic/.
The position of the wives of three generations of Heyrovská shows a shift in the position of women over the course of one century, from the second half of the 19th century. Klara, b. Hanlová von Kirchtreu (1863–1905), came from an aristocratic family, still held the traditional position of wife, housewife and mother, supporting her husband especially from home.
Jaroslav's wife Marie, b. Kořánová (1903–1983) studied at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague, after her marriage to Jaroslav she first stayed at home with the children for several years, later she worked as his secretary at the Institute of Polarography. Michael Heyrovsky married Rajalakshmi Natarajan, Indian woman, relative of the Nobel laureate Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, whom Michael met during his studies at Cambridge University and who worked as a physical chemist.
Paper will focus mainly on position of Heyrovský's wives, whose collaboration with her husbands clearly shows the change in the position of scientists' wives and their influence on her husband's research in the first half of the 20th century.

Throughout its 60-year history, the International Bryozoology Association (IBA) has had women among its members. Analysis of conference photos, membership lists, and conference volumes illuminates trends in participation by women. Of the 16 founding members, three were women (19%). In the 1970s and 1980s, women made up 21-28% of the people in the conference photo. By 2001, 38% of the conference photo and 52% of the membership list were female. In 2022, these numbers had increased to 50% and 60% respectively.
Women have been active in management of the IBA, serving as co-hosts at almost every conference since 1977, and secretaries, treasurers, and council members (since 1965). Since the first female president (in 1992), there have been three more, and the treasurer has been female since 2001.
Women made up 22% of authors in the 1968 conference volume, compared with 27% in the 2001 volume, increasing to 40% in the 2022 volume. In general, early papers were by women who chose to publish alone; today more women are publishing in mixed-gender groups.
A survey of the membership in 2024 showed that the IBA includes diversity in gender, research fields, background, age, and reproductive choices. It is less diverse in ethnicity and in (reported) sexuality. Free-text comments generally reflected a sense of welcoming inclusivity. The IBA has an admirable record of including and promoting woman scientists, who may act as role models and mentors, adding much to the strength and relevance of the Association.

Post-doctoral training is traditionally viewed as a step toward academic independence that allows PhD graduates to develop their research ideas and hone their scientific skills under the guidance of assigned supervisor (or supervisors). However, training at a far-away institution necessitates a set of personal decisions regarding family, personal (supportive) network, personal goals, hobbies, i.e. life as such. It also extends the time-span of complete devotion towards science at the cost of personal life, though without of certainty to be a prelude into academic career. Thus, it is a ground-breaking decision for an individual in their late 20s or early 30s impacting life-long personal and academic trajectories.
In the paper, we will discuss the attitude of Slovene female scholars from 1920s to 1980s towards postdoctoral training abroad (Sweden, Poland, USA and other countries), their experiences and impact of post-doctoral training on their skills, academic career and personal life as well. We will also discuss the role of societal pressure demanding from women to have a family (with children), regardless of their profession, which had detrimental effects on their academic careers - lapsing postdoctoral training led to slower advancement in research, and smaller intellectual network as well.

The academic careers of Erna and Albin Lesky exemplify the intricate relationship between science and politics, shaped by the influence of science policy networks and their political instrumentalization. Albin Lesky, a classical philologist, and his wife, Erna Lesky (née Klingenstein), a physician, were both members of the NSDAP. Following the dissolution of the Nazi Party, the Leskys leveraged connections within former NSDAP-members to advance their academic careers, while maintaining silence about their Nazi past. Albin Lesky, appointed to the Institute of Classical Philology at the University of Vienna in 1949, held key academic policy positions at the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Erna Lesky, having qualified as a lecturer in the history of medicine in 1957, made history in 1966 as the first woman appointed professor at the Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna. Albin Lesky empowered her to navigate the male-dominated academic milieu of the mid-20th century, enabling her to head the only Austrian Institute for the History of Medicine. Erna Lesky’s life motto, “Science is a very strict majesty,” echoed her commitment to scholarly rigor, mirroring Albin Lesky’s own ideals of academic integrity. The numerous honours both received were a reward to their relentless pursuit of knowledge.
This presentation draws upon extensive research for the book The Leskys: Academic Careers in Networks of 20th Century Political Systems, complemented by oral history interviews, to reconstruct the intricate professional and political relationships of a dual-career couple, who significantly shaped the academic landscape of their time.