Minister of Transport and Communications
Doc. Ing. Antonin Peltram, CSc.
Born on November 3, 1930 in Prague, married.
Mr.Peltram graduated from the Faculty of Production Economics of the Prague School of Economics in 1954, and, in 1958, attained a PhD degree in Economic Science in the field of economics, organization and planning of transport. In 1963 he completed a course of extramural studies at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague.
As an established scientist, he worked mainly in research, eventually as a senior researcher specializing in transport policy, economics and integration, and as an external lecturer at a number of institutions of higher learning. In 1969 Mr.Peltram was expelled from the Communist Party, stripped of all senior positions and subsequently of all opportunities of employment in research institutions run by central authorities. He then worked in the field of computer technology and rationalization of transport with a number of companies and organizations in Prague, and was active in the Transport Association of the Czechoslovak Society for Science and Technology.
From 1990 until the breakup of the Czechoslovak Federation, Mr.Peltram was Head of the Division for Transport Policy, Prognostication and International Relations at the Federal Ministry of Transport; he served on the Steering Committee of the first Prague Pan-European Transport Conference held in October 1991; he chaired working groups of the UN ECE Committee for Inland Transport in Geneva, etc. He resumed his university lecturing activities in 1990. After the breakup of the CSFR, he was offered a position at the Jan Perner Transport Faculty of the University of Pardubice. In 1996 he was promoted to the post of associate professor at the College of Mining of the Ostrava Technical University; over a year ago he applied for full professorship at Pardubice University.
Mr. Peltram is the author of approximately 500 papers, about 40 of which have been published abroad. He is Head of the Department for European Integration and Transport Policies at the Pardubice University Transport Faculty, and chairs the Czech section of a consortium of research centres working on the European Commission's assignment, "Socially Needed Railways in Europe". Among other positions which he holds within the CSSD, Mr.Petram is Chairman of the Party Transport Commission.