History of Department

The establishment of an independent botanical institute after the university was reestablished in 1946 was preceded by the establishment of a biological institute at the Faculty of Education of the University of Prague, whose activities continued during the biennium of natural sciences at the Faculty of Arts in 1948-1951. The germ of today's Department of Botany was the Botanical Institute at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the Pedagogical University, whose management was entrusted to Prof. Dr. Otto Mrkos from 1954. In 1958, the Pedagogical University was abolished and its faculties became part of Palacký University. Effective from 1 September 1959, the Faculty of Science was established, and two independent biological departments were established there – the Department of Botany and the Department of Zoology.

For a short time, Prof. Dr. Bohumil Jílek became the head of the Department of Botany. After he left for Prague to attend the University of Agriculture, Prof. Dr. Josef Šula took over the management of the department, who held this position from 1961-1973. During this period, new teachers joined the department, including Prof. Dr. Josef Dostál in 1963. In the years 1961-1970, the department underwent intensive development. Under the leadership of Prof. Jílek and later Prof. Dostál, the foundations of the department's systematic and ecological focus were laid. Thanks to the initiative of Prof. Šula, the didactic department was profiled. The botanical garden was also developed, new laboratories were equipped and purposeful work was done to expand the department's collection funds; herbarium items were increasing and a didactic collection of seeds and fruits was established. At this time, the number of students working under the leadership of the department's teachers also increased, and for the first time, a specialized study of biology was opened at the faculty.

The progressive development of the department stopped after the occupation in 1968. With the death of Prof. Šula, there was a change in the management of the department. Doc. PaedDr. Jarmila Poncová, CSc. became the head. (1973-1978), Prof. Dostál is forced to retire. The department is gradually losing the international contacts it had previously established, the concept of its focus is changing, and many teachers are struggling to survive in the normalization atmosphere of those years. The target numbers for accepting biology students were very low, and the department lacked experts to cover lectures and exercises in many biological disciplines. The burden of teaching rested on a few teachers. If their positions were supplemented, this was done, with exceptions, regardless of their professional qualifications. From 1978 until the November events in 1989, the department was headed by Assoc. Prof. RNDr. František Nováček, DrSc.

After the November events in 1989, some teachers who had been accepted to the department during the normalization period left and were replaced mainly by young teachers. Under the leadership of Assoc. Prof. RNDr. Vratislav Bednář, CSc. The original focus of the department is restored and a separate professional (master's) study of botany is launched. The Faculty of Science acquires the premises of the former Research and Breeding Institute of Vegetables in Olomouc-Holice, where the Department of Botany moves in the summer of 1994. This move is the basis for the further development of the department and individual scientific disciplines, especially experimental ones. During this period, some new employees come to the department, who have an influence on the development of experimental botany in the pedagogical process, but also in the scientific profiling of the department. In 1995, Prof. Ing. A. Lebeda, DrSc. becomes the head of the department. During his tenure, disciplines such as algology, phytopathology and plant biotechnology have become fully anchored in the broad framework of scientific and pedagogical activities of the Department of Botany, supplemented in recent years by modern approaches from the field of molecular and cellular biology.

During the existence of the Department of Botany, a number of well-known personalities have worked there. Among them was Prof. Dr. O. Mrkos, who laid the foundations of university botany in Olomouc. He was assisted in this by Prof. PaedDr. Jarmila Bednářová, who had worked at the UP since 1952. A prominent personality of the department was also Prof. Dr. J. Šula, the author of a botany textbook for primary schools, our leading biology teacher and long-time editor-in-chief of the magazine "Natural Sciences at School". The profile of the department was also significantly influenced by Prof. Dr. J. Dostál, a leading Czech taxonomist of higher plants, author of well-known manuals: Květeny ČSR (1948-1950), Klíče k polně květeně ČSR (1954, 1958), Nové květeny ČSSR (1988) and many scientific works, scripts and popularization articles. All of the above professors, together with their collaborators, laid the foundations of today's Department of Botany, which the current generation of teachers, including scientists, continues and develops in new directions.