In France, he became a leading specialist in mineralogy
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Zdeněk Johan was born on 18 November 1935 in Lomnice nad Popelkou in the family of a bakery employee. After the war, his father was transferred to Slovakia, to Bratislava, where Johan experienced the wave of Slovak nationalism after February 1948, related to the efforts to restore the Slovak state. After that, the family moved back to Bohemia, to Semily, where Zdeněk Johan graduated from the grammar school in the first half of the 1950s. Due to his interest in natural sciences, he enrolled at the Faculty of Science of Charles University in Prague, majoring in mineralogy. He almost failed the study twice. After denunciations for his speeches in which he defamed the communist system, he was threatened with expulsion. After graduation he had problems with placement, and briefly earned his living as a labourer. With the coming liberalisation of the regime in the 1960s, he joined the Geological Institute and participated in the preparation of the World Geological Congress, the first to be held in Eastern Europe. The congress opened in the presence of many foreign experts on 20 August 1968 in Prague, but ended the very next day after the arrival of Soviet tanks. Johan took advantage of the offer from France and went to Paris a few weeks after the occupation began. In the spring of 1969, his wife and son followed him. In France, he became one of the world’s leading specialists in mineralogy, lecturing at almost all major Western European universities, as well as in Canada, the USA, Australia, etc. Since 1990, he has been a regular visitor to the Czech Republic, lecturing for several weeks a year at Charles University. He is married and has a son.