What's in a Prague street name

K výzkumným ústavům was built in 1973. It translates as ‘To the Research Institutes’.

In 1948, physician, microbiologist and hard-line communist Ivan Málek set up a research group at the Faculty of Medicine of Charles University in Hradec Králové.

In 1953, the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences (Československá akademie věd; ČSAV), and Málek’s team transferred to its Institute of Biology.

Then, in 1962, the ČAV created a separate Institute of Microbiology; this was run by Málek until 1970. During this time – specifically in 1964 – the Institute moved here, to Krč.

The early 1990s saw the number of staff at the ČAV being cut by about 50%, and, of course, becoming a member of the solely Czech Academy of Sciences with effect from 31 December 1992.

Downsizing or no downsizing, it’s still the country’s largest research facility devoting itself to research on microorganisms (bacteria / fungi / yeasts / algae) and immunology: https://mbu.cas.cz/en.

But the research institutes in the street name are plural, not singular, and so we need to jump back to 1 January 1954, when the Institute of Physiology was founded as a section of the Biological Institute of ČSAV.

Many prominent figures worked in its four departments, including Jan Bureš, the first Czech to becomee a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

A restructuring in 1980 led to the four departments being converted into three sectors (Neurosciences / Developmental Physiology / Molecular and Cellular Physiology), but these were abolished in the 1990s, when all departments were put under the Director’s supervision.

The Institute works to understand the fundamental biological mechanisms that allow serious diseases (strokes, heart disease, diabetes, neurodegenerative conditions and metabolic disorders) to develop: https://fgu.cas.cz/en/.

I was terrible at science at school. Like, really, really bad. It’s hard not to look at the work these institutes do all over the world and think that was a shame.

I’m also not a fan of the ‘OMG CZECH IS IMPOSSIBLE LOLZ’ foreigners in Prague (if you haven’t learned after twenty years, it’s because you don’t want to), but I do wonder what somebody who had rocked up here for the first time without knowing a word of Czech would make of street names like this.