One of the foremost Czech poets of the second half of the twentieth century, Miroslav Holub was also a scientist whose work in the field of immunology was respected both in the former Czechoslovakia and abroad. In addition, he was an accomplished essayist and translator.

Holub was born on 13 September 1923 in Plzen in western Bohemia to Josef and Frantiska (née Dvoráková) Holub. His father was a lawyer who worked at the headquarters of the state railway; his mother was a secondary-school teacher of French and German descent. When the Czech universities were closed down during the Nazi occupation in World War II, Holub worked as a laborer at a warehouse and at a railway station. After the war he entered the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Charles University in Prague, switching to the Faculty of Medicine in 1946. He pursued research in immunology as...