He eventually was hired as a lichen researcher by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, who allowed him to work from his apartment, which served also as an office and herbarium.
Vězda was a productive worker, publishing nearly 400 scientific papers between 1948 and 2008, most solitarily, describing hundreds of new taxa, and building up a herbarium collection of more than 300,000 specimens.
He was praised for his series of exsiccates – sets of dried herbarium specimens – assembled with both local species as well as samples sent to him from colleagues throughout the world.
Vězda qualified to enter university in 1940, but the German occupation of Czechoslovakia during World War II made it impossible for him to study.
[3] Vězda, like many other academics at that time, was dismissed from university for political reasons in 1958, as they were considered untrustworthy by the communist regime in power.
[3] This dissertation launched his international career, and, despite the isolation imposed by the communist regime, he continued corresponding with prominent lichenologists worldwide, some of whom visited him, or sent him collections for analysis.
During the time of the Iron Curtain, his travels had to be limited to Eastern Europe and the Caucasus; even there he could often only collect disguised as a tourist.
It was only later, after retirement, that he visited many regions in Western and Southern Europe and overseas areas, including the Canary Islands, Dominica, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Seychelles.
[18] An exsiccate issued in 2010, containing "little, fine, special lichens and lichenicolous fungi", was dedicated to him by Hungarian lichenologist Edit Farkas.
[7] The National Museum in Prague, which holds his extensive collections of exsiccate material, calls him "possibly the best-known Czech lichenologist".