The authors introduce the readers to the personality of Lev Spinadel who returned from the Second World War as a specialized anaesthesiologist. His aim was not only to practice modem anaesthetic methods in a large hospital but also to promote this worldwide young medical specialty in Czechoslovakia. He became the founder of the first Czechoslovak department of Anaesthesiology in the Central Army Hospital in Prague. The department started its regular activities on the 1st of January 1948. He achieved his goal when anaesthesiology became a higher medical specialty in 1954. He gave a firm basis to the new specialty by writing the great textbook Clinical Anaesthesiology (published in 1950), by founding the Anaesthesiology Review Journal in 1953 (editor till 1970), by teaching anaesthesiology at the Postgraduate Medical Institute in Prague as a member of the staff of the Chair of Surgery, and by his active participation in the work of the Committee for Anaesthesiology in the Czechoslovak Surgical Society of J. E. Purkinje. He lived 1897-1970.

        Key words: anaesthesiology - founder