After graduating from the Faculty of Pjilosophy of Charles University in 1952 (graduated in history and Slavic studies), Jaroslav Šedivý (1929) earned Ph.D. degree in 1962. Having finished his military service (1952–54), he started to work as an expert in the Institute for Intemational Affairs and Economy in Prague.

His scientific work focused primarily on the history of the Czechoslovak foreign policy.

In February 1970 he was fired from the Institute for his activities in 1968 and in the course or Soviet occupation.

Having been deprived of the possibility to perform his profession he worked i.a. as a window cleaner. In September 1989 he was hired by the Prognostic Institute of the Academy of Sciences to work out an analysis of the international environment surrounding Czechoslovakia at that time.

In December 1989 he became advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jiří Dienstbier, and in June 1990 he was appointed Ambassador of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, later the Czech Republic, to France. In December 1994, after he finished his mission in Paris, he was appointed Director of the Planning and Analysis Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Prague.

In December 1995 he became Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the Kingdom of Belgium and to Luxembourg, being at the same time accredited to NATO and WEU.

In November 1997 he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affaires of the Czech Republic.

Jaroslav Šedivý published studies on intemational relations and history of the Czech foreign policy. His book titled "Politics and Relations" published in Bratislava in 1969 was later on, in 1972, withdrawn from libraires. Not being allowed to publish his works in the years of the Soviet occupation, he wrote and published two books under a borrowed name - one of them on the history of "Decembrists" in Russia (A Humbled Revolution, Prague 1978), the other one about Metternich versus Napoleon (two editions in 1985 and 1988 reached 55 thousand copies, in 1991 the book was published in Moscow under the real author´s name in Russian language). In 1997, in Prague, he published a book covering the initial stages of new Czech foreign policy after the changes of 1989 titled "The Czernin Palace in the Year Zero".

Jaroslav Šedivý is married, has two children, son Jiř9 and daughter Hana.