It has been 110 years since Albert Einstein arrived in Prague for his tenure as a professor of theoretical physics – 16 months in his life that were often overlooked. Einstein in Bohemia by historian Michael D. Gordin changes earlier perceptions, showing that it was in Prague that Einstein shifted full-time to the study of gravity.

The debate over whether to give birth in hospital or at home is one that has continued in the Czech Republic for years. Sociologist Anna Pospěch Durnová wanted to get to the heart of the issue and headed extensive research to find out what influenced expectant mothers' decisions. 

Kateřina Chládková is one of the few researchers in the world who study the earliest stages of language acquisition, which means she is often in contact with babies – even in the maternity ward. Her aim is to find out how we learn to speak from the very first moments of life.

TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has been searching the sky for exoplanets outside our solar system since 2018. Charles University’s Petr Zasche was part of the international team that made a new sensational find: an eclipsing six-star system.

A team of Czech parasitologists from CU’s Faculty of Science has been working with researchers from Great Britain, Israel, and Canada to develop an effective vaccine preventing against leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease transmitted by sand flies. The results of their study were published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.

There are more than 3‚000 species of termites, and their combined mass is greater than the combined mass of all human beings on the planet. They’re best known as pests that can gnaw through your house, but only in recent years has more research been done into their significance for the ecosystem.

Petr Plecháč, completing a Ph.D. at Charles University, made world headlines with his analysis of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. It was long accepted that the play was co-authored by playwright John Fletcher, but Plecháč’s study – using machine learning – analysed word frequency patterns and rhythms to provide further evidence that the play was a collaborative effort. Henry VIII was not written by Shakespeare alone.

Much of the focus of IDEA, a think-tank of the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, which is part of CERGE-EI, is tied this year to the novel coronavirus, and anti-Covid measures. However, that is far from its only activity: this week the think tank hosted an online conference examining the influence of public policy on labour markets.

For 30 years Professor Stanislav Kmoch has devoted himself to the research of rare diseases; during the coronavirus pandemic, his laboratory was able to apply significant know-how in the development of new diagnostic kits for the detection of Covid-19.

A number of deadly viruses are believed to have originated in bats, including Ebola and the original SARS. The indications are that the novel coronavirus SARS-Cov-2 also made the jump from bats, most likely through an intermediary species.