Institutional Preconditions for the Development of Science in Slovakia after 1918

Scholar activities within the Slovak national-scientific society before 1918 are often characterized as amateurish and rather enthusiastic. This evaluation is quite right while one of main reasons is to be seen in an absence of any institutional background, inevitable for professionalization as well as specialization of individual scientific activities of the Slovak intellectual elite. The year 1918, when Slovakia constituted as an administrative unit within a new state, is an essential political milestone which was quite naturally reflected also as far as the Slovak science history is concerned. This issue of Forum Historiae aims to offer an analysis of institutional preconditions of a development of the science in Slovakia after 1918, particularly from yet unresearched or less known aspects.