Section Archive Czech Science
History of archaeology in Czech lands
The next few programmes will be dedicated to one particular discipline,
archaeology, which in this country has a long and interesting history.
Czech excavators have made many achievements both in this country and
abroad, and thanks to the rich history of this part of Europe, there is
always much for them to do.
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Physicist and chemist Zdenek Herman named "Czech Head" of 2003
In 2002 a team of scientists and marketing experts launched a project
called Czech Head, which is intended to support and promote Czech science
among the public, to make it an attractive "brand". Czech Head
includes a number of activities and its culmination is an annual award
bearing the same name. Ahead of this year's award ceremony, I talked to
Vaclav Marek of the organisation's planning committee.
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First ever dinosaur bone discovered in Czech Republic
In March this year, Michal Moucka, a doctor from the town of Kutna Hora
took his sons to a nearby quarry to look for fossils of small ancient sea
animals. Unexpectedly, the father and sons returned home with a priceless
find - the first dinosaur bone ever discovered on Czech territory. As
palaeontology is Mr Moucka's hobby, he immediately contacted experts from
Charles University in Prague, who confirmed that the 40-centimetre bone
comes from a specimen from the family Iguanodontidae that lived around 95
million years ago. Such a find is unique in this country because at the
time when dinosaurs inhabited the Earth, the territory of what is now the
Czech Republic was covered by a sea. The animal whose fossil has now been
unearthed probably lived on one of many small islands in that sea, and
that may be why it never reached the giant proportions of some of its
relatives living inland. Professor Oldrich Fejfar is a palaeontologist
from Prague's Charles University. He is working on the team of experts who
are examining the fossil.
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Women in Czech science
In this week's Czech Science we'll be looking at a topic relevant not only
in the Czech Republic - and that is women in science. I talked to Marcela
Linkova from the National Contact Centre Women and Science, whose aim is
to promote women in scientific professions, and asked her first why women
could be considered a separate category in Czech science.
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New edition of Universum encyclopaedia published
In this week's edition of Czech Science we look at a new encyclopaedia that
has just been published. In 2000 and 2001 the Euromedia Group publishing
house put out a ten-volume encyclopaedia called Universum, which contained
150,000 entries and was awarded in the Dictionary of the Year contest the
following year. Last autumn a multimedia version of the encyclopaedia was
published and was awarded the main prize in the same contest. A four-tome
version followed and finally, last week a single-volume, up-to-date
edition of Universum came out, containing around 40,000 entries.
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Contact lens inventor Otto Wichterle was born 90 years ago
Last week, Czech academics marked the 90th anniversary of the birth of the
outstanding Czech scientist and legendary inventor of the contact lens and
the synthetic fibre "silon", Professor Otto Wichterle, who died
five years ago. Those who had a chance to meet him, his former students
and colleagues remember Otto Wichterle not only for his achievements in
science and research but also for his exceptional personality.
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