Mendel Days 1-2 November 2023

Four Elements: prayer for water

This year's Mendel Days will focus on the wider context of Mendel's legacy. Lectures and workshops will present not only new research results on Mendel's remains and period artefacts, but also the importance and contribution of natural sciences to Czech and European society.

The main theme of the Mendel Days will be a thematic lecture block called "in a Skácelovian way" The Four Elements: a prayer for water. The element of water will be discussed in terms of its necessity for man and society, its availability and (lack of) sufficiency, with an emphasis on climate change and landscape transformations. The lectures will be complemented by talks, concerts and student workshops featuring not only Brno and Prague experts, but also Masaryk University PhD students.

Mendel and the world

Masaryk University and its Mendel Museum are committed to the legacy of Gregor Johann Mendel, a native of Hynčice, and commemorate this important scientist every autumn during Mendel Days. In 1843, Johann Mendel entered the Augustinian Order in the monastery in Stary Brno, which was at that time the centre of Moravian learning, and took the religious name Gregor. Mendel was educated in the natural sciences, learned the techniques of scientific work, and his experiments and research led to the scientific conclusions that are now known as Mendel's Laws of Heredity. Mendel thus became the founding father of one of the most important disciplines of our time - genetics.