Chvátal was born in Prague in 1946 and educated in mathematics at Charles University in Prague, where he studied under the supervision of Zdeněk Hedrlín. He fled Czechoslovakia in 1968, three days after the Soviet invasion, and completed his Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Waterloo, under the supervision of Crispin St. J. A. Nash-Williams, in the fall of 1970. Subsequently, he took positions at McGill University (1971 and 1978-1986), Stanford University (1972 and 1974-1977), the Université de Montréal (1972-1974 and 1977-1978), and Rutgers University (1986-2004) before returning to Montreal for the