Josef Theurer was born in Litomyšl in 1862, into the family of a civil engineer. He attended the grammar school in his hometown and went on to study physics at the University of Prague. During his studies he worked as an assistant at the Department of Physics under Prof. Čeněk Strouhal. After university he spent a while working as a secondary school teacher in Jindřichův Hradec, Pelhřimov and Prague. His scientific interests then led him to the Mining Academy in Příbram, where he taught mathematics and physics. He was soon awarded an associate professorship and started to build his own physics institutezde. He introduced physics practices and became one of the first people to teach physics as a separate discipline at technical schools in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. In 1902 he was appointed professor and two years later rector of what by then was the Mining University in Příbram.
As a scientist he specialised in a great many different fields. He took a theoretical and experimental interest in optics, electromagnetism, acoustics, thermodynamics and radioactivity, and was the Czech pioneer in the study of radiophony – the transmission of words and music using electromagnetic waves. He published a great many works, including the first Czech-language secondary school physics textbook. Through his teaching he reared an entire generation of mining experts and helped to establish the modern form of mining engineering studies with an emphasis on scientific methods and technological advancement. In addition to his scientific and teaching career, he was also a highly talented musician. He was a piano virtuoso, a conductor and also a music theorist and critic. He greatly admired the work of Bedřich Smetana and was a personal friend of Antonín Dvořák.
