The World's Fair EXPO ´58, the architectural focus of which was Atomium, began in the City of Brussels on 17th of April 1958. Over the course of six months of the event, 42 million people visited going down in history as one of the most successful in the history of the World Fairs. Czechoslovakia met with enormous success at the exhibition with the Modern architectural design of a restaurant receiving great acclaim, this being moved to Prague after the exhibition. The EXPO ´58 Fair defined the overall lifestyle of the first half of the 1960s to a significant extent. The so-called Brussels style in architecture is also a distinct “period style” of the second half of the 20th century.
The Czech chemist Jaroslav Heyrovský (1890-1967) received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (discovery of the polarographic method) in 1959.