rle in the 1950s discovered hydrogel poly-hydroxyethyl methacrylate or HEMA, a polymer which would retain water in order to stay moist on eyeballs. According to industry reports, on Christmas day in 1961, Wichterle spun his first soft contact lens from the material using a centrifuge made out of a gramophone motor. Health optics group Bausch & Lomb bought the rights to the process in 1966 from an intermediary, and in 1971 the company gained approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to sell the world`s first soft contact lenses. Wichterle, who never became very wealthy from his discovery which has led to a billion dollar industry worldwide, was removed by Communist authorities as head of a chemistry institute in 1970, after helping to organise anti-Communist protest during the Czech attempt at democratic reforms in 1968. The reform movement was ended with the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in August, 1968. Wichterle continued his work, however, as a researcher until the 1989 revolution which ousted the Communist government. In 1990, he was appointed chairman of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and three years later he was named honorary chairman of the Czech Academy of Sciences after the split of Czechoslovakia. The academy said the professor`s family declined to disclose the cause of his death. Wichterle was the author of about 150 patents and more than 200 publications and the winner of many domestic and foreign academic awards.