Václav Tesař graduated from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague. He joined the same university in 1963 as a research and teaching assistant. In 1973 he received the degree of Candidate of Technical Sciences in Thermomechanics and Fluid Mechanics and became successively Assistant Professor, Associate Professor (1991) and Full Professor (1994). He taught fluid mechanics. Between 1994 and 1998 he was Head of the Department of Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics.
In 1985, he was a visiting professor at Keio University in Yokohama, Japan. In 1992, he was a visiting professor and consultant at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, USA. Between 1999 and 2004, he was a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, University of Sheffield, UK. From 2004 to 2005 he was a consultant at the University of Sheffield.
Since 2006 he has worked as a researcher at the Institute of Thermomechanics of the CAS in Department D2 – Thermodynamics. In 2023 he was appointed Emeritus of the Institute of Thermomechanics.
He was interested in fluid mechanics in general, turbulence and modelling of hydraulic or pneumatic systems and their elements. He investigated shear regions in flow and the aerodynamics of jets generated by nozzle discharge. He applied the basic knowledge to the study and design of fluidic and microfluidic elements for flow control without moving parts.
He was the author of more than 400 technical papers, 4 textbooks and the monograph Pressure-Driven Microfluidics, published in the USA. He was also the originator of more than 200 patents, mainly for various fluidic devices. In 2009, he received the Moulton Medal, awarded annually by the Institute of Chemical Engineering in the UK for the best scientific publication in the field.
Professor Zimmerman, from the School of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering, worked closely with Professor Tesař “ Vaclav was my long time collaborator. We invented the microbubble generation approach using the Tesar-Zimmerman fluidic oscillator, in 2005. Vaclav was a Professorial Research Fellow in our fluidics team at Sheffield from 1999-2006, and was a tremendous and joyful friend to all who engaged with him.”