J.G. Mendel Czech Antarctic Station (Czech: Česká vědecká stanice Johanna Gregora Mendela) is a Czech research station in Antarctica on the coast of James Ross Island. It was founded by 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.

In 1994 a group of Czech researchers from Masaryk University, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice and Czech Hydrometeorological Institute set out to King George Island to carry out research at the Polish station, which is one of eight stations located in that area. This cooperation continued until 1997. However, working at a foreign station proved to be unsuitable due to conflicts between the individual research teams. Afterwards, it was proposed to build a common station of the countries of the Visegrád Group (the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary). However, this proposal was later rejected due to problems with the distribution of funding among the countries.

The research activities of Masaryk University and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Antarctica continued between 1999 and 2004. As there was still no Czech station (even though preparations for construction were already under way), the research was carried out at the stations of the United Kingdom and Ukraine.

The first site chosen for the future Czech station was Turret Point, which is located close to King George Bay on King George Island, approximately 200 kilometres (120 mi) north of the current location. In 2001 the proposed location was submitted to the Committee for Environmental Protection at a conference in Saint Petersburg. However, the proposal was refused, primarily due to the number of existing stations in the area and a proposal submitted by other countries to declare the area protected. There was also the option of using one of the mothballed British stations, but none of them met the needs of the Czech scientific expedition. Therefore, a new location was chosen and presented at the next Committee conference, which took place in Warsaw. This time, the proposed location of the station was approved without any further problems. The location was at the northern tip of James Ross Island and it is the place where the station was finally built. The ice-free surroundings and large distance from other station – the closest one is the Argentinian Marambio Base, more than 70 kilometres (43 mi) to the south-east – were the most obvious benefits of this location. The project documentation of the station was completed during the next conference of the Committee for Environmental Protection in 2003, but it was refused due to changes made after the deadline. It was approved the following year, with almost no changes to the scope of construction, at a conference in Cape Town. The transport of material to the future location of the station started already in autumn 2004.

The structure of the station had to meet two requirements: minimum energy consumption and minimum environmental burden for the surrounding area. The main principles for the construction of the station included:

The station is located at 63°48′02.3″ S, 57°52′59.9″ W on James Ross Island near the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. This peninsula juts out from mainland Antarctica to the north towards the southern tip of South America. The first sailor to reach James Ross Island was probably James Clark Ross in the 19th century, who called it "Haddington Land". It was not until the winter of 1902/1903 that the expedition led by Otto Nordenskjöld found out that Haddington Land is actually an island and called it James Ross Island in honour of its discoverer. They also named the Strait separating it from the mainland the Prince Gustav Channel. It is an area with low concentration of polar stations; the closest station is the Argentinian Marambio Base on Seymour Island. The Mendel Polar Station building and facilities are located on the northern coast of James Ross Island, on a slightly stony beach about 80–100 metres (260–330 ft) from the shoreline at an altitude of 9 metres (30 ft) between the Bibby Point and Cape Lachman headlands. It faces the Prince Gustav Channel, which is 10–20 kilometres (6.2–12.4 mi) long and used to be covered by a permanent layer of ice that disintegrated in the summer of 1994. However, it is still full of ice floes and pieces of icebergs, so ship transport remains complicated (as of 2010).