This publication is focused on the phenomenon of institutionally and internationally established scientific meetings from the beginning of the 20th century to the present, aiming to outline the more general features of organising international scientific conferences as well as the specifics of the Czech and Central European milieu in particular. The chapters herein deal both with specific conferences and congresses as well as their importance for the development of certain disciplines or branches of science, or for the career growth and scientific profiling of certain personalities.

Contents

• Approaches to the History of International Scientific Congresses. Opportunities and Problems (Ulrike Thoms)
• Soviet Scientists (Members of Science Societies) at International Scientific Meetings in the 1920s: Political and Ideological Aspects (Elena Sinelnikova)
• On Soviet Soil. Curtis Marbut’s Encounter with Rural Russia in the Stalinist Transformation (Jan Arend)
• The Czech Geographer Jiří Viktor Daneš and His Presence at the Eighth International Geographic Congress in Washington in 1904. A Paper on the Everydayness of a Czech Scientist on His Travels (Petra Tomsová)
• “One Cannot Always Just Sit at a Convention, We Are Human, after All …” Student and Professors of the Czech Technical University at Conferences and in the Social Environment of International Conventions in 1918–1938 (Kamila Mádrová)
• The Presence of Czech Astronomers at International Conferences, 1918–1938 (Petra Hyklová)
• “The Preparatory Organisational Work Developed Quite Satisfactorily…” Bratislava in the 1930s and International Lawyers’ Conventions (Katarína Zavacká)
• When Science Does Not Conquer Boundaries… Conferences of the Technical Sciences at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in the 1950s and 1960s – Home vs. Abroad (Milena Josefovičová)
• When a Scientist Went to Fight: Czechoslovak “Socialist Science Emissaries” at International Congresses (Michaela Kůželová)
• Doing One’s Laundry in a Hotel Room. The Everydayness of Josef Charvát and Ivan Málek at Congresses and Scientific Conventions in Western Countries in the 1960s (Martin Franc)
• RILEM 1961 – The First Post-war Convention of the International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials, Systems and Structures in Socialist Bloc Countries (Věra Dvořáčková)