[8] He obtained his early education at secondary school until 1909 when he began his study of chemistry, physics, and mathematics at the Charles University in Prague.

[citation needed] During the First World War Heyrovský worked in a military hospital as a dispensing chemist and radiologist, which enabled him to continue his studies and to take his Ph.D. degree in Prague in 1918 and D.Sc.

Heyrovský's invention of the polarographic method dates from 1922 and he concentrated his whole further scientific activity on the development of this new branch of electrochemistry.

In 1950 Heyrovský was appointed as the Director of the newly established Polarographic Institute, which was incorporated into the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1952.

Heyrovský lectured on polarography in the United States in 1933, the USSR in 1934, England in 1946, Sweden in 1947, the People's Republic of China in 1958, and in U.A.R.