What's in a Prague street name
Every street in Prague, one by one.
recent posts (search bar on main page for about a gazillion more)
I could talk about myself for ages, or I could point out that https://english.radio.cz/ed-ley-englishman-recording-stories-pragues-streets-one-one-8806941 is over two years old but still largely stands (other than the Twitter links).
Category: Scientists
-
Pasteurova was built in 1981. Louis Pasteur was born in Dole, in central-eastern France, in 1822 (fun fact: Dole is twinned with Tábor (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2025/02/06/prague-4-day-26-taborska/)). In his early years, he was a better artist than he was student, and created many portraits of family members and residents of Arbois, where he was brought up. In 1842,…
-
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…
-
Murgašova was built in 1969. Jozef Murgaš was born in Tajov, near Banská Bystrica in Slovakia, in 1864 (photo taken from Wikimedia Commons, credit to Peter Zelizňák). Having finished his schooling in Banská Bystrica, he went to Bratislava to study at the seminary from 1880 to 1882, then moving to Esztergom (now in Hungary) to…
-
Originally published on X on 9 May 2024. Pierre Curie was born in Paris in 1859. He was educated at home by his parents (his father was a doctor), and took his baccalaureate in science when he was 16. Two years later – when he was just 18 – he would already have a degree…
-
Originally published on X on 29 February 2024. Jakub Jan Václav Dobřenský was born in Prague in 1623. He studied medicine and philosophy at Charles University (and also in Italy), and began teaching at the university in 1664. In the meantime, he bought several properties in Prague and set up laboratories in them. One of…
-
Originally published on X on 4 February 2024. Bernard Bolzano was born in Prague in 1781. His father was an Italian-born arts dealer, while his mother came from a German-speaking family which had arrived in Prague from Austria around 1700. Graduating from the Piarist gymnasium in 1796, he then studied mathematics and philosophy, switching to…
-
Originally published on X on 9 January 2024. Jan Evangelista Purkyně was born on the noble estate at Libochovice (near Litoměřice) in 1787. He joined the Piarists as a monk in 1804, but quit at the age of twenty and became a tutor to a noble family before studying medicine at Prague University from 1813…
-
Originally published on X on 23 March 2023. Náměstí I. P. Pavlova was built in 1897; nowadays, it’s home to Prague’s busiest metro station. Until 1925, this was Komenského náměstí, and was presumably changed because there already was one in Žižkov: https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2022/11/26/prague-3-day-82-komenskeho-namesti/ It then became náměstí Petra Osvoboditele. Petr Osvoboditel is King Peter the Liberator,…
