Jozef Božetech Klemens

Jozef Božetech Klemens (8 March 1817, Liptovský Mikuláš – 17 January 1883, Vienna) was a Slovak portrait painter, sculptor, photographer, inventor and naturalist.

[1] He became an assistant at a printing shop owned by Gašpar Fejérpataky-Belopotocký [sk], a Slovak patriot and cultural figure, who used his influence to promote Klemens' education.

[2] In 1837, upon the recommendations of Karel Slavoj Amerling and Father Václav Štulc [cs], he was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague for a trial period.

After 1839, Klemens also worked as a teacher at a girls' school operated by Amerling, where he experimented with the educational techniques of Jan Amos Komenský (known as "Comenius").

[1] He completed his studies in 1849 and went back to his hometown, using his wife's dowry to establish a workshop for manufacturing zinc oxide with equipment he had designed himself.

On the basis of his work determining the epicenter of a small earthquake at Žilina in 1858, he was appointed a corresponding member of the "Imperial Geological Institute" in Vienna.