Mendel Polar Station
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Mendel Polar Station Mendelova polární stanice |
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| Antarctic base | |
 Mendel Polar Station
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| Coordinates: 63°48.272′S 57°53.147′W / 63.804533°S 57.885783°WCoordinates: 63°48.272′S 57°53.147′W / 63.804533°S 57.885783°W | |
| Country | Czech Republic |
| Region | Graham Land, Antarctic Peninsula |
| Location | James Ross Island |
| Founded | 29 October 1969 (1969–70 austral summer season) |
| Named for | Gregor Mendel |
| Type | Seasonal |
| Period | Summer |
| Status | Active and operational |
Mendel Polar Station is a Czech research station in Antarctica on the coast of James Ross Island. It was founded by a Czech polar explorer Pavel Prošek. The official opening ceremony took place in February 2007 and made the Czech Republic the 26th country to have its own scientific base on the continent. The station is the property of Masaryk University in Brno and was named after the father of modern Genetics, the meteorologist Gregor Johann Mendel. Thanks to the research carried out at the station, the Czech Republic is one of the countries who have a voting right in the Antarctic Treaty System.
A plan to build a Czech polar station first appeared in the 1960s. It was driven partly by political interests of the Soviet Union, but mostly by an effort to expand the biological, glaciological, climatological and geological research in Czechoslovakia. However, the efforts to build the station came to an end at the beginning of the 1970s due to a lack of funding. At the same time, interest in investing into research in such a distant and unusual location began to wane.
The interest started to grow again in the 1980s on the part of the Czech Geological Institute (now Czech Geological Survey). At the same time, they chose a location where the base was to be built: in the eastern part of Antarctica on Prydz Bay. (Later on, Australia, Russia, and China all built their stations in this area.) However, the project was cancelled again despite sufficient funding. This time, it failed to find a federal institution willing to support it and submit the plan for approval to the Federal Assembly, as required; even the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic issued a negative decision.
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