Mendel Days 4–5 November 2026
The Four Elements: Air—Earth Below, Sky Above
Mendel Days 2026 will conclude the Four Elements series, which has explored water, earth and fire in previous years. This year’s edition turns to the last of the four elements: air. As in previous years, it looks at Gregor Johann Mendel’s wide range of interests and highlights his legacy in contexts that reach beyond individual academic disciplines.
The main theme of this year’s Mendel Days is the lecture series The Four Elements: Air – Earth Below, Sky Above.
Lectures will explore air from many angles: meteorology and physics, its importance to people and the planet as a whole, and the protection of the atmosphere and ecosystems. They will also look at the origins of air and how its composition and quality have changed throughout history, the fascinating world of air currents and atmospheric phenomena, and humanity’s age-old desire to fly. Further talks will cover the properties of air and its use in modern technology, along with its spiritual dimension as breath, long linked to the essence of life. The whole programme will then culminate in a musical interpretation of the element of air.
The main guests of Wednesday’s Mendel Days programme will be Irena Radová, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University, who will offer a philosophical reflection on the story of Daedalus and Icarus, and Jiří Mrázek of the Protestant Theological Faculty at Charles University, with a lecture on the theme of air in the New Testament. Jaroslav Rožnovský of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute and Mendel University in Brno will talk about Gregor Mendel’s connection to meteorology. The natural-science side of the programme continues with experts from Masaryk University, including a lecture by Vít Kudrle, who will focus on the origin, properties and significance of air for life, science and technology. Jakub Kříž will close the programme with a talk on how air has been portrayed in visual art. The first day will end with a concert, followed by a social gathering with refreshments in the Mendel Greenhouse.
The second day will bring further lectures from experts at Masaryk University, specifically from departments of the Faculty of Science at MU – the Department of Geological Sciences, RECETOX, the Department of Plasma Physics and Technology, and the Department of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics. Visitors will journey through four billion years of change in Earth’s atmosphere and centuries of shifting air quality and pollution, before moving on to the physics of flight and the principles of movement through air, and finally to the atmospheres of distant planets and the plasma that fills most of the universe. The programme will close with an experimental lecture on the surprising properties of the air around us, illustrated with hands-on demonstrations of physical phenomena.
Mendel Days are open to students and the general public.
Gregor Johann Mendel
Masaryk University and its Mendel Museum are committed to the legacy of Gregor Johann Mendel, a native of Hynčice, and commemorate this vital scientist every autumn during Mendel Days. In 1843, Johann Mendel entered the Augustinian Order in the monastery in Old Brno, which was at that time the center of Moravian education, and took the religious name Gregor. Mendel was educated in the natural sciences and learned the techniques of scientific work. His experiments and research led to the scientific conclusions 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.