Education has been of prime interest to Poland's rulers since the early 12th century. The catalog of the library of the Cathedral Chapter in
Kraków
Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...
dating from 1110 shows that Polish scholars already then had access to western European literature. In 1364, King
Kazimierz the Great
Casimir III the Great ( pl, Kazimierz III Wielki; 30 April 1310 – 5 November 1370) reigned as the King of Poland from 1333 to 1370. He also later became King of Ruthenia in 1340, and fought to retain the title in the Galicia-Volhynia Wars. He wa ...
founded the
Cracow Academy
The Jagiellonian University (Polish: ''Uniwersytet Jagielloński'', UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and the 13th oldest university in ...
, which would become one of the great universities of Europe. The Polish people have made considerable contributions in the fields of science, technology and mathematics. The list of famous scientists in Poland begins in earnest with the
polymath
A polymath ( el, πολυμαθής, , "having learned much"; la, homo universalis, "universal human") is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific pro ...
,
astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, g ...
and
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
Nicolaus Copernicus
Nicolaus Copernicus (; pl, Mikołaj Kopernik; gml, Niklas Koppernigk, german: Nikolaus Kopernikus; 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic Church, Catholic cano ...
, who formulated the heliocentric theory and made an important contribution to the scientific revolution.
In 1773 King
Stanisław August Poniatowski
Stanisław II August (born Stanisław Antoni Poniatowski; 17 January 1732 – 12 February 1798), known also by his regnal Latin name Stanislaus II Augustus, was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1764 to 1795, and the last monarch ...
established the
Commission of National Education, the world's first ministry of education.
After the
third partition of Poland, in 1795, no Polish state existed. The 19th and 20th centuries saw many Polish scientists working abroad. One of them was
Maria Skłodowska-Curie
Marie Salomea Skłodowska–Curie ( , , ; born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, ; 7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first ...
, a physicist and chemist living in France. Another noteworthy one was
Ignacy Domeyko
Ignacy Domeyko or Domejko, pseudonym: ''Żegota'' ( es, Ignacio Domeyko, ; 31 July 1802 – 23 January 1889) was a Polish geologist, mineralogist, educator, and founder of the University of Santiago, in Chile. Domeyko spent most of his life, and ...
, a geologist and mineralogist who worked in Chile.
In the first half of the 20th century, Poland was a flourishing center of mathematics. Outstanding Polish mathematicians formed the
Lwów School of Mathematics (with
Stefan Banach,
Hugo Steinhaus
Hugo Dyonizy Steinhaus ( ; ; January 14, 1887 – February 25, 1972) was a Polish mathematician and educator. Steinhaus obtained his PhD under David Hilbert at Göttingen University in 1911 and later became a professor at the Jan Kazimierz Unive ...
,
Stanisław Ulam) and
Warsaw School of Mathematics (with
Alfred Tarski,
Kazimierz Kuratowski,
Wacław Sierpiński
Wacław Franciszek Sierpiński (; 14 March 1882 – 21 October 1969) was a Polish mathematician. He was known for contributions to set theory (research on the axiom of choice and the continuum hypothesis), number theory, theory of functions, and to ...
). The events of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
pushed many of them into exile. Such was the case of
Benoît Mandelbrot, whose family left Poland when he was still a child. An alumnus of the Warsaw School of Mathematics was
Antoni Zygmund, one of the shapers of 20th-century
mathematical analysis
Analysis is the branch of mathematics dealing with continuous functions, limit (mathematics), limits, and related theories, such as Derivative, differentiation, Integral, integration, measure (mathematics), measure, infinite sequences, series (m ...
. According to
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
, Polish scientists were among the pioneers of
rocket
A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely fr ...
ry.
Today Poland has over 100 institutions of post-secondary education — technical, medical, economic, as well as
500 universities — which are located in most major cities such as
Gdańsk
Gdańsk ( , also ; ; csb, Gduńsk;Stefan Ramułt, ''Słownik języka pomorskiego, czyli kaszubskiego'', Kraków 1893, Gdańsk 2003, ISBN 83-87408-64-6. , Johann Georg Theodor Grässe, ''Orbis latinus oder Verzeichniss der lateinischen Benen ...
,
Kraków
Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...
,
Lublin
Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of t ...
,
Łódź
Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of canti ...
,
Poznań
Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint John ...
,
Rzeszów and
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
. They employ over 61,000 scientists and scholars. Another 300 research and development institutes are home to some 10,000 researchers. There are, in addition, a number of smaller laboratories. All together, these institutions support some 91,000 scientists and scholars.
Timeline
From 2001

*
Olga Malinkiewicz, Polish physicist and inventor of a method of producing
solar cell
A solar cell, or photovoltaic cell, is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect, which is a physical and chemical phenomenon. s based on
perovskite
Perovskite (pronunciation: ) is a calcium titanium oxide mineral composed of calcium titanate (chemical formula ). Its name is also applied to the class of compounds which have the same type of crystal structure as (XIIA2+VIB4+X2−3), known as ...
s using
inkjet printing
*
Asymmetric numeral systems (ANS), a family of entropy encoding methods introduced by Jarosław Duda from
Jagiellonian University
The Jagiellonian University (Polish: ''Uniwersytet Jagielloński'', UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and the 13th oldest university in ...
, since 2014 widely used in
data compression
* Poland joins the
European Southern Observatory
The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, commonly referred to as the European Southern Observatory (ESO), is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental research organisation made up of 16 mem ...
ESO (2014), 16-nation intergovernmental research organisation for astronomy.
*
PW-Sat
PW-Sat is a series of satellites that includes the first Polish artificial satellite which was launched 13 February 2012 from ELA-1 at Guiana Space Centre aboard Italian-built Vega launch vehicle during its maiden voyage. PW-Sat1's mission was ...
, the first Polish satellite launched into space (2012); other Polish satellites include
Lem
Lem may refer to:
Places
* 3836 Lem, an asteroid named after Stanisław Lem
* , a municipality in Jutland
People Given name or nickname
(Alphabetical by surname)
* Lemuel Lem Barney (born 1945), American football player
* Lem Billings (1916– ...
and
Heweliusz
*
Artificial heart
An artificial heart is a device that replaces the heart. Artificial hearts are typically used to bridge the time to heart transplantation, or to permanently replace the heart in the case that a heart transplant (from a deceased human or, experi ...
, an implant, program: "Polish Artificial Heart"
*
Graphene acquisition, in 2011 the Institute of Electronic Materials Technology and Department of Physics,
Warsaw University announced a joint development of acquisition technology of large pieces of graphene with the best quality so far. In April the same year, Polish scientists with support from the Polish Ministry of Economy began the procedure for granting a patent to their discovery around the world.
*
Maximal entropy random walk (MERW) is a popular type of
biased random walk on a graph
In network science, a biased random walk on a graph is a time path process in which an evolving variable jumps from its current state to one of various potential new states; unlike in a pure random walk, the probabilities of the potential new st ...
, used e.g. in complex network analysis, image analysis, tractography, physics, which was started by article
from
Jagiellonian University
The Jagiellonian University (Polish: ''Uniwersytet Jagielloński'', UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and the 13th oldest university in ...
*
Blue laser
A blue laser is a laser that emits electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength between 360 and 480 nanometers, which the human eye sees as blue or violet.
Blue beams are produced by helium-cadmium gas lasers at 441.6 nm, and argon-ion las ...
, first blue laser in Poland (third in the world)
1951–2000
*
Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, Polish-American chemist, discoverer of
atom-transfer radical polymerization
*
Bohdan Paczyński, Polish
astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, g ...
, credited with the development of a new method of detecting space objects and establishing their mass using the
gravitational lenses effect; he is acknowledged for coining the term
microlensing
Gravitational microlensing is an astronomical phenomenon due to the gravitational lens effect. It can be used to detect objects that range from the mass of a planet to the mass of a star, regardless of the light they emit. Typically, astronomers ...
*
Janusz Brzozowski, Polish-Canadian computer scientist known for developing the
Brzozowski derivative
In theoretical computer science, in particular in formal language theory, the Brzozowski derivative u^S of a set S of strings and a string u is the set of all strings obtainable from a string in S by cutting off the prefix u, as illustrated in th ...
and
Brzozowski's algorithm
*
PSR 1257+12
PSR B1257+12, previously designated PSR 1257+12, alternatively designated PSR J1300+1240, is a millisecond pulsar located 2,300 light-years from the Sun in the constellation of Virgo, rotating at about 161 times per second (faster than a ...
, a pulsar located 2,630 light years from Earth. It is believed to be orbited by at least four planets. These were the first
extrasolar planets
An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, init ...
ever discovered (by a Polish
astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, g ...
,
Aleksander Wolszczan
Aleksander Wolszczan (born 29 April 1946) is a Polish astronomer. He is the co-discoverer of the first confirmed extrasolar planets and pulsar planets.
Early life and education
Wolszczan was born on 29 April 1946 in Szczecinek located in pre ...
, in 1992). Polish astronomy has traditionally been among the best in the world.
*
Władysław Świątecki, a Polish physicist noted for pioneering research in
nuclear physics
Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter.
Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies the ...
including the
nuclear shell model
In nuclear physics, atomic physics, and nuclear chemistry, the nuclear shell model is a model of the atomic nucleus which uses the Pauli exclusion principle to describe the structure of the nucleus in terms of energy levels. The first shell mod ...
and for coining the term the
island of stability
*
Jack Tramiel, Polish American businessman, best known for founding
Commodore International;
Commodore PET,
VIC-20
The VIC-20 (known as the VC-20 in Germany and the VIC-1001 in Japan) is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PE ...
and
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...
are some home computers produced while he was running the company
*
Foundation For Polish Science
The Foundation For Polish Science ( pl, Fundacja na rzecz Nauki Polskiej, FNP) is an independent, non-profit making organisation which aim at improving the opportunities for doing research in Poland. Established in 1990, registered in 1991, the ...
- a non-governmental organisation aiming at supporting academics with high potential - since (1991)
*
PZL W-3 Sokół, a helicopter, FAA certificate in (1989)
*
Paul Baran, Polish-American engineer who was a pioneer in the development of
computer networks; he was one of the two independent inventors of
packet switching, which is today the dominant basis for data communications in computer networks worldwide
*
Henryk Magnuski
Henryk Władysław Magnuski (January 30, 1909 – May 4, 1978) was a Polish telecommunications engineer who worked for Motorola in Chicago. He was a primary contributor in the development of one of the first Walkie-Talkie radios, the Motorola SCR- ...
, Polish telecommunications engineer who worked for
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. () was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent p ...
in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
. He was the inventor of the first
Walkie-Talkies and one of the authors of his company success in the fields of radio communication
*
Benoit Mandelbrot
Benoit B. Mandelbrot (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a Polish-born French-American mathematician and polymath with broad interests in the practical sciences, especially regarding what he labeled as "the art of roughness" of phy ...
, mathematician of Polish descent; known for developing a theory of "roughness and
self-similarity" and significant contributions to
fractal geometry and
chaos theory
Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics focused on underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, and were once thought to have co ...
;
Mandelbrot set
*
Flaris LAR01, Polish five-seat single-engined
very light jet, currently under development by Metal-Master of
Jelenia Góra
*
Solaris Urbino 18 Hybrid, a low-floor articulated
hybrid buses from the
Solaris Urbino
Solaris Urbino is a series of low-floor buses and low-entry doorway intercity buses, powered by diesel drive engines and alternative fuel (CNG, gas and biogas, hybrid and electric), produced by the Polish company Solaris Bus & Coach in Bo ...
series for city communication services manufactured by
Solaris Bus & Coach in
Bolechowo near
Poznań
Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint John ...
in Poland
*
PZL Kania
The PZL Kania (Polish ''Kite'', also marketed as Kitty Hawk) is a follow-up design to the Mil Mi-2 helicopter, developed in Poland by PZL-Świdnik.
Design and development
In 1964, an agreement was signed between Poland and the Soviet Union assi ...
, a helicopter, first prototype (1979), FAR-29 certificate (early 1980s)
*
Odra (computer), a line of computers manufactured in
Wrocław
Wrocław (; german: Breslau, or . ; Silesian German: ''Brassel'') is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the River Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, rou ...
(1959/1960)
*
K-202
K-202 was a 16-bit minicomputer, created by a team led by Polish scientist Jacek Karpiński between 1970–1973 in cooperation with British companies Data-Loop and M.B. Metals. Approximately 30 units were claimed to be produced. All units s ...
, first Polish microcomputer invented by
Jacek Karpiński
Jacek Karpiński (9 April 1927 21 February 2010) was a Polish pioneer in computer engineering and computer science.
During World War II, he was a soldier in the Batalion Zośka of the Polish Home Army, and was awarded multiple times with a C ...
(1971)
*
FB MSBS
FB, Fb, or fb may refer to:
Arts and media
* F♭ (musical note)
* FB (band), an electronic music collaboration of Benny Benassi and Ferry Corsten
* Facebook, a social networking website, also known as FB.com
** Meta Platforms, formerly Facebo ...
, an
assault rifle developed by
FB "Łucznik" Radom
*
FB Beryl
The karabinek szturmowy wzór 1996 Beryl (English: ''assault rifle model 1996 beryllium'') is a Polish 5.56mm assault rifle, designed and produced by the Łucznik Arms Factory in the city of Radom. The rifle is to replace the 7.62×39mm AKM an ...
, an
assault rifle designed and produced by the
Łucznik Arms Factory in the city of
Radom
*
Polish Polar Station, Hornsund
Polish Polar Station, Hornsund ( pl, Polska Stacja Polarna, Hornsund) is at ''Isbjørnhamna'' in Hornsund, on Spitsbergen in the Norway, Norwegian Svalbard archipelago, operated since 1957.
Station
The station was erected in July 1957 by the Polis ...
since (1957)
*
PZL SW-4 Puszczyk
The PZL SW-4 Puszczyk (en: tawny owl) is a Polish light single-engine multipurpose helicopter manufactured by PZL-Świdnik. Following a protracted development, the SW-4 entered service in 2002, the primary operator of the type has been the Polis ...
, Polish light single-engine multipurpose helicopter manufactured by
PZL Swidnik
PZL (''Państwowe Zakłady Lotnicze'' - State Aviation Works) was the main Polish aerospace manufacturer of the interwar period, and a brand of their aircraft. Based in Warsaw between 1928 and 1939, PZL introduced a variety of well-regarded airc ...
*
EP-09, 'B0B0' Polish electric locomotive class
*
PT-91, Polish main battle tank. Designed at the Research and Development Centre of Mechanical Systems OBRUM (''Ośrodek Badawczo-Rozwojowy Urządzeń Mechanicznych'') in
Gliwice
*
Grom (missile), an anti-aircraft missile
*
206FM, class minesweeper (NATO: "Krogulec")
*
Meteor (rocket)
Meteor is a designation of a series of Polish sounding rockets. The Meteor rockets were built between 1963 and 1974.
Meteor was the one and two stages meteorological rockets, using the solid fuel, constructed for the research of the top layers ...
, a series of sounding rockets (1963)
*
PZL TS-11 Iskra, a jet trainer aircraft, used by the air forces of Poland and India (1960)
*
Lim-6
The Lim-6 (NATO reporting name Fresco) was a Polish attack aircraft used between 1961 and 1992 by the Polish Air Force. It was a variant of the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17, which was produced in Poland as the Lim-5.
Development
In 1955 Poland bough ...
, attack aircraft (1955)
*
Mizar system, a system consisting of a formal language for writing mathematical definitions and proofs, a proof assistant, which is able to mechanically check proofs written in this language, and a library of formalized mathematics, which can be used in the proof of new theorems; it was designed by Polish mathematician
Andrzej Trybulec
Andrzej Wojciech Trybulec (29 January 1941 in Kraków, Poland – 11 September 2013 in Białystok, Poland) was a Polish mathematician and computer scientist noted for work on the Mizar system.
Early years
His parents Jan W. Trybulec and Barbara ...
in 1973
*
Mieczysław G. Bekker
Mieczysław Gregory Bekker (1905–1989) was a Polish engineer and scientist.
Bekker was born in Strzyżów, near Hrubieszów, Poland and graduated from Warsaw Technical University in 1929.
Early career
Bekker worked for the Polish Minist ...
, Polish engineer and scientist, co-authored the general idea and contributed significantly to the design and construction of the
Lunar Roving Vehicle
The Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) is a battery-powered four-wheeled rover used on the Moon in the last three missions of the American Apollo program ( 15, 16, and 17) during 1971 and 1972. It is popularly called the Moon buggy, a play on the t ...
used by missions
Apollo 15
Apollo 15 (July 26August 7, 1971) was the ninth crewed mission in the United States' Apollo program and the fourth to Moon landing, land on the Moon. It was the first List of Apollo missions#Alphabetical mission types, J mission, with a ...
,
Apollo 16
Apollo 16 (April 1627, 1972) was the tenth crewed mission in the United States Apollo space program, administered by NASA, and the fifth and penultimate to land on the Moon. It was the second of Apollo's " J missions", with an extended sta ...
, and
Apollo 17
Apollo 17 (December 7–19, 1972) was the final mission of NASA's Apollo program, the most recent time humans have set foot on the Moon or traveled beyond low Earth orbit. Commander Gene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt walked on ...
on the Moon
*The
Polish Academy of Sciences
The Polish Academy of Sciences ( pl, Polska Akademia Nauk, PAN) is a Polish state-sponsored institution of higher learning. Headquartered in Warsaw, it is responsible for spearheading the development of science across the country by a society of ...
, headquartered in Warsaw, was founded in 1952.
*
Hilary Koprowski, Polish
virologist
Virology is the scientific study of biological viruses. It is a subfield of microbiology that focuses on their detection, structure, classification and evolution, their methods of infection and exploitation of host cells for reproduction, their ...
and
immunologist, inventor of the world's first effective live
polio vaccine
*
Andrzej Udalski, initiator of the
OGLE
Ogle may refer to:
Places
* Ogle County, Illinois, United States
* Original name of Ashton, Illinois, a village
* Ogle, Kentucky, United States, an unincorporated community
* Ogle Township, Somerset County, Pennsylvania, United States
* Ogle, Nor ...
project, which led to the such significant discoveries as the detection of the first merger of a binary star, first Cepheid pulsating stars in the eclipsing binary systems, unique nova systems, quasars and galaxies
*
Stefania Jabłońska
Stefania Jabłońska (born Szela Ginzburg; 7 September 1920 – 8 May 2017) was a Polish physician and professor specializing in dermatology. She worked at the Medical University of Warsaw.
In 1972, she theorized the association of human papillo ...
, Polish physician; in 1972 Jabłońska proposed the association of the human papilloma viruses with
skin cancer in
epidermodysplasia verruciformis
Epidermodysplasia verruciformis (EV), also known as treeman syndrome, is an extremely rare autosomal recessive hereditary skin disorder associated with a high risk of skin cancer. It is characterized by abnormal susceptibility to human papillom ...
; in 1978 Jabłońska and Gerard Orth at the
Pasteur Institute
The Pasteur Institute (french: Institut Pasteur) is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization and vaccines f ...
discovered HPV-5 in skin cancer; Jabłońska was awarded the 1985
Robert Koch Prize
The Robert Koch Medal and Award are two prizes awarded annually by the German for excellence in the biomedical sciences. These awards grew out of early attempts by German physician Robert Koch to generate funding to support his research into the ...
*
Andrew Schally
Andrzej Viktor "Andrew" Schally (born 30 November 1926) is an American endocrinologistAndrew V. Schally"Andrew V. Schally" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. of Polish ancestry, who was a corecipient, with Roger Guillemin and Rosalyn Sussman Yalow, of ...
,
Polish-American
Polish Americans ( pl, Polonia amerykańska) are Americans who either have total or partial Poles, Polish ancestry, or are citizens of the Republic of Poland. There are an estimated 9.15 million self-identified Polish Americans, representing abou ...
endocrinologist and
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
laureate
*
Tomasz Dietl, Polish physicist; known for developing the theory, confirmed in recent years, of diluted ferromagnetic semiconductors, and for demonstrating new methods in controlling magnetization
*
Ryszard Horodecki
Ryszard Horodecki (born 30 September 1943) is a Polish physicist and a professor of University of Gdańsk. He contributed largely to the field of quantum informatics. In his most widely cited paper, 'Separability of Mixed States: Necessary and Su ...
, Polish physicist; he contributed largely to the field of
quantum informatics and
theoretical physics
Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experim ...
;
Peres-Horodecki criterion
*
Andrzej Szczeklik
Andrzej Szczeklik (July 29, 1938 – February 3, 2012) was a Polish immunologist working at the Jagiellonian University School of Medicine (''Collegium Medicum'') in Kraków. Having received numerous distinctions for his research, Szczeklik was ...
, Polish immunologist; credited with discovering the anti-thrombotic properties of
aspirin
Aspirin, also known as acetylsalicylic acid (ASA), is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used to reduce pain, fever, and/or inflammation, and as an antithrombotic. Specific inflammatory conditions which aspirin is used to treat inc ...
, and studies on the pathogenesis and treatment of aspirin-induced bronchial
asthma
Asthma is a long-term inflammatory disease of the airways of the lungs. It is characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and easily triggered bronchospasms. Symptoms include episodes of wheezing, cou ...
*
Antoni Zygmund, Polish
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
, considered one of the greatest analysts of the 20th century
*
Leonid Hurwicz
Leonid Hurwicz (; August 21, 1917 – June 24, 2008) was a Polish-American economist and mathematician, known for his work in game theory and mechanism design. He originated the concept of incentive compatibility, and showed how desired outcomes ...
, Polish economist and mathematician; he originated
incentive compatibility
A mechanism is called incentive-compatible (IC) if every participant can achieve the best outcome to themselves just by acting according to their true preferences.
There are several different degrees of incentive-compatibility:
* The stronger d ...
and
mechanism design, which show how desired outcomes are achieved in
economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...
,
social science
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soc ...
and
political science
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...
*
Artur Ekert, Polish physicist; one of the inventors of
quantum cryptography
*
Jacek Pałkiewicz
Jacek Pałkiewicz (born 2 June 1942) is a Polish journalist, traveler and explorer. Fellow (by recommendation from Thor Heyerdahl) of the prestigious London-based Royal Geographical Society and numerous other such societies, he is best known fo ...
, Polish journalist, traveler and explorer; fellow of the
Royal Geographical Society
The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), often shortened to RGS, is a learned society and professional body for geography based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical scien ...
, discoverer of the sources of the
Amazon River
The Amazon River (, ; es, Río Amazonas, pt, Rio Amazonas) in South America is the largest river by discharge volume of water in the world, and the disputed longest river system in the world in comparison to the Nile.
The headwaters of t ...
*
Kazimierz Kuratowski, Polish mathematician, a leading representatives of the
Warsaw School of Mathematics;
Kuratowski's theorem
In graph theory, Kuratowski's theorem is a mathematical forbidden graph characterization of planar graphs, named after Kazimierz Kuratowski. It states that a finite graph is planar if and only if it does not contain a subgraph that is a subdivi ...
,
Kuratowski-Zorn lemma;
Kuratowski closure axioms
*
Tadek Marek, Polish automobile engineer, known for his
Aston Martin
Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings PLC is an English manufacturer of luxury sports cars and grand tourers. Its predecessor was founded in 1913 by Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford. Steered from 1947 by David Brown, it became associated with ...
engines
*
Otto Marcin Nikodym, Polish mathematician;
Radon-Nikodym theorem
*
Zygmunt Bauman, Polish sociologist and philosopher; one of the world's most eminent social theorists writing on issues as diverse as
modernity
Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norm (social), norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissancein the " ...
and the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
,
postmodern
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...
consumerism as well as the concept of
liquid modernity which he introduced
*
Kazimierz Dąbrowski
Kazimierz Dąbrowski (1 September 1902 in Klarów – 26 November 1980 in Warsaw) was a Polish psychologist, psychiatrist, and physician. He is best known for his theory of " positive disintegration" as a mechanism in personality development. H ...
, Polish
psychologist
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...
; he developed the theory of
positive disintegration, which describes how a person's development grows as a result of accumulated experiences
*
Hypernucleus
A hypernucleus is similar to a conventional atomic nucleus, but contains at least one hyperon in addition to the normal protons and neutrons. Hyperons are a category of baryon particles that carry non-zero strangeness quantum number, which is con ...
discovery by
Jerzy Pniewski and
Marian Danysz
Marian Danysz (March 17, 1909 – February 9, 1983) was a Polish physicist, Professor of Physics at Warsaw University.
Son of Jan Kazimierz Danysz. In 1952, he co-discovered with Jerzy Pniewski a new kind of matter, an atomic nucleus, which ...
in 1952.
*
Anna Wierzbicka
Anna Wierzbicka (born 10 March 1938 in Warsaw) is a Poles, Polish linguistics, linguist who is Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University, Canberra. Brought up in Poland, she graduated from Warsaw University and emigrated to Austr ...
, Polish linguist; known for her work in
semantics
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy
Philosophy (f ...
,
pragmatics
In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the int ...
and
cross-cultural linguistics; she's credited with formulating the theory of
natural semantic metalanguage
The natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) is a linguistic theory that reduces lexicons down to a set of semantic primitives. It is based on the conception of Polish professor Andrzej Bogusławski. The theory was formally developed by Anna Wierzbick ...
and the concept of
semantic primes
*
Andrzej Grzegorczyk, Polish mathematician; he introduced the
Grzegorczyk hierarchy
The Grzegorczyk hierarchy (, ), named after the Polish logician Andrzej Grzegorczyk, is a hierarchy of functions used in computability theory. Every function in the Grzegorczyk hierarchy is a primitive recursive function, and every primitive recurs ...
- a subrecursive hierarchy that foreshadowed
computational complexity theory
In theoretical computer science and mathematics, computational complexity theory focuses on classifying computational problems according to their resource usage, and relating these classes to each other. A computational problem is a task solved by ...
*
Stanisław Jaśkowski
Stanisław Jaśkowski (22 April 1906, in Warsaw – 16 November 1965, in Warsaw) was a Polish logician who made important contributions to proof theory and formal semantics. He was a student of Jan Łukasiewicz and a member of the Lwów–War ...
, Polish mathematician; he is regarded as one of the founders of
natural deduction, which he discovered independently of
Gerhard Gentzen in the 1930s; he was among the first to propose a formal calculus of
inconsistency-tolerant (or paraconsistent) logic; furthermore, Jaśkowski was a pioneer in the investigation of both
intuitionistic logic and
free logic
A free logic is a logic with fewer existential presuppositions than classical logic. Free logics may allow for terms that do not denote any object. Free logics may also allow models that have an empty domain. A free logic with the latter propert ...
.
*
Karol Borsuk, Polish mathematician; his main area of interest was
topology
In mathematics, topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformations, such ...
; he introduced the theory of absolute retracts (ARs) and absolute neighborhood retracts (ANRs), and the
cohomotopy groups
In mathematics, particularly algebraic topology, cohomotopy sets are particular contravariant functors from the category of pointed topological spaces and basepoint-preserving continuous maps to the category of sets and functions. They are du ...
, later called Borsuk–Spanier cohomotopy groups; he also founded
shape theory;
Borsuk's conjecture
The Borsuk problem in geometry, for historical reasons incorrectly called Borsuk's conjecture, is a question in discrete geometry. It is named after Karol Borsuk.
Problem
In 1932, Karol Borsuk showed that an ordinary 3-dimensional ball in Eucl ...
,
Borsuk-Ulam theorem
*
Jerzy Konorski, Polish
neurophysiologist; he discovered secondary conditioned reflexes and
operant conditioning
Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, is a learning process where behaviors are modified through the association of stimuli with reinforcement or punishment. In it, operants—behaviors that affect one's environment—are c ...
and proposed the idea of gnostic neurons - a concept similar to the
grandmother cell
The grandmother cell, sometimes called the "Jennifer Aniston neuron", is a hypothetical neuron that represents a complex but specific concept or object. It activates when a person "sees, hears, or otherwise sensibly discriminates" a specific entit ...
; he also coined the term
neural plasticity, and he developed theoretical ideas regarding it
*
Antoni Kępiński, Polish
psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...
; he developed the psychological theory of
information metabolism which explores human
social interactions based on
information processing
Information processing is the change (processing) of information in any manner detectable by an observer. As such, it is a process that ''describes'' everything that happens (changes) in the universe, from the falling of a rock (a change in posit ...
which significantly influenced the development of
socionics
*
Zbigniew Religa, Polish
cardiac surgeon; a pioneer in human heart transplantation; in 1987 he performed the first successful
heart transplant
A heart transplant, or a cardiac transplant, is a surgical transplant procedure performed on patients with end-stage heart failure or severe coronary artery disease when other medical or surgical treatments have failed. , the most common proce ...
in Poland; in 1995 he was the first surgeon to graft an artificial valve created from materials taken from human corpses; in 2004 Religa and his team developed an implantable pump for a pneumatic heart assistance system
*
Maria Siemionow
Maria Siemionow (born 1950 in Krotoszyn, Poland) is a Polish transplant surgeon and scientist who led a team of eight surgeons through the world's first near-total face transplant at the Cleveland Clinic in 2008. The patient, Connie Culp, a 45-ye ...
, a renowned Polish transplantation
surgeon
In modern medicine, a surgeon is a medical professional who performs surgery. Although there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon usually is also a licensed physician or received the same medical training as ...
and scientist who gained world recognition when she led a team of eight surgeons through the world's first near-total
face transplant
A face transplant is a medical procedure to replace all or part of a person's face using tissue from a donor. Part
of a field called "Vascularized Composite Tissue Allotransplantation" (VCA) it involves the transplantation of facial skin, the ...
at the
Cleveland Clinic in 2008
*
Tadeusz Krwawicz, Polish
ophthalmologist
Ophthalmology ( ) is a surgery, surgical subspecialty within medicine that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of eye disorders.
An ophthalmologist is a physician who undergoes subspecialty training in medical and surgical eye care. Followin ...
; he pioneered the use of
cryosurgery in ophthalmology; he was the first to describe a method of
cataract extraction by cryoadhesion in 1961, and to develop a probe by means of which cataracts can be grasped and extracted
*
Albert Sabin, Polish-American medical researcher, best known for developing the oral
polio vaccine which has played a key role in nearly
eradicating the disease
*
Stefan Kudelski, Polish audio engineer known for creating the
Nagra
Nagra is a brand of portable audio recorders produced from 1951 in Switzerland. Beginning in 1997 a range of high-end equipment aimed at the audiophile community was introduced, and Nagra expanded the company’s product lines into new markets.
...
series of professional audio recorders
*
Zdzisław Pawlak, Polish
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
and
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...
; known for his contribution to many branches of
theoretical computer science
Theoretical computer science (TCS) is a subset of general computer science and mathematics that focuses on mathematical aspects of computer science such as the theory of computation, lambda calculus, and type theory.
It is difficult to circumsc ...
; he is credited with introducing the
rough set theory and also known for his fundamental works on it; he had also introduced the Pawlak flow graphs, a graphical framework for reasoning from data
*
Samuel Eilenberg, Polish-American mathematician,
Eilenberg–MacLane space,
Eilenberg–Mazur swindle,
Eilenberg–Maclane spectrum,
Eilenberg–Steenrod axioms
In mathematics, specifically in algebraic topology, the Eilenberg–Steenrod axioms are properties that homology theories of topological spaces have in common. The quintessential example of a homology theory satisfying the axioms is singular homo ...
*
Jan Czekanowski
Jan Czekanowski (October 8, 1882, Głuchów – July 20, 1965, Szczecin) was a Polish anthropologist, statistician, ethnographer, traveller, and linguist. His scientific contributions include introducing his system of racial classification and fou ...
, Polish
anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
,
ethnographer,
statistician
A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors.
It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...
and
linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
; one of the founders of
computational linguistics
Computational linguistics is an Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general, comput ...
, he introduced the
Czekanowski binary index
*
Henryk Iwaniec, mathematician, he is noted for his outstanding contributions to
analytic number theory
In mathematics, analytic number theory is a branch of number theory that uses methods from mathematical analysis to solve problems about the integers. It is often said to have begun with Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet's 1837 introduction of Diric ...
and
sieve theory;
Friedlander-Iwaniec theorem
*
Andrzej Piotr Ruszczyński
Andrzej Piotr Ruszczyński (born July 29, 1951) is a Polish-American applied mathematician, noted for his
contributions to mathematical optimization, in particular, stochastic programming and risk-averse optimization.
Schooling and positions ...
, Polish-American
applied mathematician, noted for his contributions to
mathematical optimization
Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfi ...
, in particular,
stochastic programming
In the field of mathematical optimization, stochastic programming is a framework for modeling optimization problems that involve uncertainty. A stochastic program is an optimization problem in which some or all problem parameters are uncertain, ...
and risk-averse optimization
1901–1950
*
Polish mine detector
The Mine detector (Polish) Mark I () was a metal detector for landmines developed during World War II. Initial work on the design had started in Poland but after the invasion of Poland by the Germans in 1939, and then the Fall of France in mid- ...
, a metal detector used for detecting
land mines, developed during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
(1941–42) by Polish Lieutenant
Józef Stanisław Kozacki. It contributed substantially to British Field Marshal
Bernard Montgomery
Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, (; 17 November 1887 – 24 March 1976), nicknamed "Monty", was a senior British Army officer who served in the First World War, the Irish War of Independence and t ...
's 1942 victory over German Field Marshal
Erwin Rommel
Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel () (15 November 1891 – 14 October 1944) was a German field marshal during World War II. Popularly known as the Desert Fox (, ), he served in the ''Wehrmacht'' (armed forces) of Nazi Germany, as well as servi ...
at
El Alamein
El Alamein ( ar, العلمين, translit=al-ʿAlamayn, lit=the two flags, ) is a town in the northern Matrouh Governorate of Egypt. Located on the Arab's Gulf, Mediterranean Sea, it lies west of Alexandria and northwest of Cairo. , it had ...
.
*
Cryptologic bomb was a special-purpose machine designed in 1938 by Polish
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
-
cryptologist Marian Rejewski
Marian Adam Rejewski (; 16 August 1905 – 13 February 1980) was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who in late 1932 reconstructed the sight-unseen German military Enigma cipher machine, aided by limited documents obtained by French mili ...
to speed the breaking of the
Enigma machine cipher
In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is ''encipherment''. To encipher or encode i ...
s that would be used by
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. It was a forerunner of the "
Bombes" that would be used by the British at
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following ...
, and which would be a major element in the Allied
Ultra
adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by breaking high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. '' ...
program that may have decided the outcome of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
*''
Biuro Szyfrów
The Cipher Bureau, in Polish: ''Biuro Szyfrów'' (), was the interwar Polish General Staff's Second Department's unit charged with SIGINT and both cryptography (the ''use'' of ciphers and codes) and cryptanalysis (the ''study'' of ciphers and ...
'' (Cipher Bureau) was the Polish
military intelligence
Military intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to assist commanders in their decisions. This aim is achieved by providing an assessment of data from a ...
agency that made the first break (1932, just as
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
was about to take power in Germany) into the German
Enigma machine cipher
In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is ''encipherment''. To encipher or encode i ...
that would be used by
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
through
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, and kept reading Enigma ciphers at least until France's
capitulation in June 1940.
*
Czochralski method
The Czochralski method, also Czochralski technique or Czochralski process, is a method of crystal growth used to obtain single crystals of semiconductors (e.g. silicon, germanium and gallium arsenide), metals (e.g. palladium, platinum, silver, ...
, a technique of crystal growth used to obtain single crystals of semiconductors (e.g. silicon, germanium and gallium arsenide), metals (e.g. palladium, platinum, silver, gold) and salts (1916)
*
Joseph Rotblat, Polish physicist who worked on the
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
,
Nobel laureate
The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make out ...
*
Stanisław Ulam, Polish-American mathematician who participated in Manhattan Project, originated the
Teller–Ulam design
A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...
of
thermonuclear weapons
A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...
, discovered the concept of
cellular automaton, invented the
Monte Carlo methods
Monte Carlo methods, or Monte Carlo experiments, are a broad class of computational algorithms that rely on repeated random sampling to obtain numerical results. The underlying concept is to use randomness to solve problems that might be determini ...
of computation, and suggested
nuclear pulse propulsion.
*
Wacław Struszyński, a Polish electronics engineer who made a vital contribution to the defeat of
U-boats
U-boats were naval submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy naval warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare rol ...
in the
Battle of the Atlantic
The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, ran from 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, covering a major part of the naval history of World War II. At its core was the Allied naval blockade ...
, he designed a radio antenna which enabled effective high frequency (HF) radio direction finding systems to be installed on
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
convoy escort ships. Such direction finding systems were referred to as HF/DF or
Huff-Duff
High-frequency direction finding, usually known by its abbreviation HF/DF or nickname huff-duff, is a type of radio direction finder (RDF) introduced in World War II. High frequency (HF) refers to a radio band that can effectively communicate over ...
, and enabled the bearings of U-boats to be determined when the U-boats made high frequency radio transmissions.
*
Vickers Tank Periscope MK.IV
The Gundlach Periscope, usually known under its British designation as Vickers Tank Periscope MK.IV, was a revolutionary invention by Polish engineer Rudolf Gundlach, manufactured for Polish 7TP tanks from the end of 1935 and patented in 1936 as ...
, the first device to allow the tank commander to have a 360-degree view from his turret, invented by engineer
Rudolf Gundlach (1936)
*
Polish notation, also known as prefix notation, is a method of mathematical expression (1920)
*
Reverse Polish notation
Reverse Polish notation (RPN), also known as reverse Łukasiewicz notation, Polish postfix notation or simply postfix notation, is a mathematical notation in which operators ''follow'' their operands, in contrast to Polish notation (PN), in whi ...
, (RPN), also known as postfix notation (1920)
*
Zygalski sheets, also known as "perforated sheets" (invented in 1938 by
Henryk Zygalski), were one of a number of devices created by the Polish
Cipher Bureau to facilitate the breaking of German
Enigma ciphers.
*
Stefan Banach, Polish mathematician,
Banach space
In mathematics, more specifically in functional analysis, a Banach space (pronounced ) is a complete normed vector space. Thus, a Banach space is a vector space with a metric that allows the computation of vector length and distance between vector ...
,
Banach-Tarski paradox,
Banach algebra,
Functional analysis
Functional analysis is a branch of mathematical analysis, the core of which is formed by the study of vector spaces endowed with some kind of limit-related structure (e.g. Inner product space#Definition, inner product, Norm (mathematics)#Defini ...
,
Banach fixed-point theorem
In mathematics, the Banach fixed-point theorem (also known as the contraction mapping theorem or contractive mapping theorem) is an important tool in the theory of metric spaces; it guarantees the existence and uniqueness of fixed points of certai ...
,
uniform boundedness principle
In mathematics, the uniform boundedness principle or Banach–Steinhaus theorem is one of the fundamental results in functional analysis.
Together with the Hahn–Banach theorem and the open mapping theorem, it is considered one of the cornerst ...
,
Banach–Alaoglu theorem
In functional analysis and related branches of mathematics, the Banach–Alaoglu theorem (also known as Alaoglu's theorem) states that the closed unit ball of the dual space of a normed vector space is compact in the weak* topology.
A common proo ...
,
Banach measure
In the mathematics, mathematical discipline of measure theory, a Banach measure is a certain type of finite measure, content used to formalize geometric area in problems vulnerable to the axiom of choice.
Traditionally, intuitive notions of are ...
*
Lwów School of Mathematics was a group of eminent Polish mathematicians that included
Hugo Steinhaus
Hugo Dyonizy Steinhaus ( ; ; January 14, 1887 – February 25, 1972) was a Polish mathematician and educator. Steinhaus obtained his PhD under David Hilbert at Göttingen University in 1911 and later became a professor at the Jan Kazimierz Unive ...
,
Stanisław Ulam,
Mark Kac and many more.
*
Tadeusz Banachiewicz
Tadeusz Julian Banachiewicz (13 February 1882, Warsaw – 17 November 1954, Kraków) was a Polish astronomer, mathematician and geodesist.
Scientific career
He was educated at University of Warsaw and his thesis was on "reduction constan ...
, Polish astronomer, inventor of the
chronocinematograph
Chronocinematograph is an astronomical instrument consisting of a Photographic film, film camera, Observatory chronometer, chronometer and chronograph. The device records images using a more precise timetable for observing an eclipse. It was invent ...
*
7TP
The 7TP (''siedmiotonowy polski'' - 7-tonne Polish) was a Polish light tank of the Second World War. It was developed from the British Vickers 6-ton. A standard tank of the Polish Army during the 1939 Invasion of Poland, its production did not e ...
, light
tank
A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat. Tank designs are a balance of heavy firepower, strong armour, and good battlefield mobility provided by tracks and a powerful engin ...
of the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
(1935)
*
FB Vis
Vis (Polish designation ''pistolet wz. 35 Vis'', German designation ''9 mm Pistole 35(p)'', or simply the Radom in English sources) is a 9×19mm caliber, single-action, semi-automatic pistol. Its design was inspired by American firearms inven ...
, a 9×19mm caliber, single-action, semi-automatic pistol
*
PZL.23 Karaś
The PZL.23 ''Karaś'' (''crucian carp'') was a Polish light bomber and reconnaissance aircraft designed in the early 1930s by PZL in Warsaw.
During the interwar period, the Polish High Command had placed considerable emphasis upon the role of ar ...
, light
bomber
A bomber is a military combat aircraft designed to attack ground and naval targets by dropping air-to-ground weaponry (such as bombs), launching aerial torpedo, torpedoes, or deploying air-launched cruise missiles. The first use of bombs dropped ...
and
reconnaissance
In military operations, reconnaissance or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, terrain, and other activities.
Examples of reconnaissance include patrolling by troops (skirmisher ...
aircraft designed in the
PZL
PZL (''Państwowe Zakłady Lotnicze'' - State Aviation Works) was the main Polish aerospace manufacturer of the interwar period, and a brand of their aircraft. Based in Warsaw between 1928 and 1939, PZL introduced a variety of well-regarded air ...
(1934)
*
PZL P.11
The PZL P.11 was a Polish fighter aircraft, designed and constructed during the early 1930s by Warsaw-based aircraft manufacturer PZL. Possessing an all-metal structure, metal-covering, and high-mounted gull wing, the type held the distinction of ...
, Polish
fighter aircraft
Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace. Domination of the airspace above a battlefield ...
, designed by
Zygmunt Pulawski Zygmunt, Zigmunt, Zigmund and spelling variations thereof are masculine given names and occasionally surnames. People so named include:
Given name Medieval period
* Sigismund I the Old (1467–1548), Zygmunt I Stary in Polish, King of Poland and Gr ...
in the early 1930s by PZL in Warsaw;it was briefly the most advanced fighter aircraft of its kind in the world
*
PZL.37 Łoś
The PZL.37 ''Łoś'' (''moose'') was a Polish twin-engined medium bomber designed and manufactured by national aircraft company PZL. It is also known as "PZL P-37" or "PZL P.37", but the letter "P" was generally reserved for fighters of Zygmunt Pu� ...
, twin-engine medium
bomber
A bomber is a military combat aircraft designed to attack ground and naval targets by dropping air-to-ground weaponry (such as bombs), launching aerial torpedo, torpedoes, or deploying air-launched cruise missiles. The first use of bombs dropped ...
designed in the
PZL
PZL (''Państwowe Zakłady Lotnicze'' - State Aviation Works) was the main Polish aerospace manufacturer of the interwar period, and a brand of their aircraft. Based in Warsaw between 1928 and 1939, PZL introduced a variety of well-regarded air ...
by
Jerzy Dąbrowski (mid-1930s)
*
LWS-6 Żubr, initially a passenger plane. Since the Polish airline
LOT
Lot or LOT or The Lot or ''similar'' may refer to:
Common meanings Areas
* Land lot, an area of land
* Parking lot, for automobiles
*Backlot, in movie production
Sets of items
*Lot number, in batch production
*Lot, a set of goods for sale togethe ...
bought Douglas DC-2 planes instead, the project was converted to a bomber aircraft (early-1930s)
*
SS Sołdek
SS ''Sołdek'' is a retired Polish coal and ore freighter. She was the first ship built in Gdańsk (Poland) after World War II and the first seagoing ship completed in Poland. She was the first of 29 ships classed as Project B30, built betwee ...
, the first ship built in Poland after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
(1948)
*
Alfred Korzybski, Polish philosopher and mathematician who developed the field of
general semantics and is known for the
map–territory relation
The map–territory relation is the relationship between an object and a representation of that object, as in the relation between a geographical territory and a map of it. Polish-American scientist and philosopher Alfred Korzybski remarked that ...
*
Mieczysław Wolfke
Mieczysław Wolfke (29 May 1883 – 4 May 1947) was a Polish physicist, professor at the Warsaw University of Technology, the forerunner of holography and television. He discovered the method of solidification of helium as well as two types of l ...
, "one of precursors in the development of
holography" (a quote from
Dennis Gabor)
*
Hugo Steinhaus
Hugo Dyonizy Steinhaus ( ; ; January 14, 1887 – February 25, 1972) was a Polish mathematician and educator. Steinhaus obtained his PhD under David Hilbert at Göttingen University in 1911 and later became a professor at the Jan Kazimierz Unive ...
, Polish mathematician; one of the founders of the
Lwów School of Mathematics, he is regarded as one of the early founders of
game theory
Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among rational agents. Myerson, Roger B. (1991). ''Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict,'' Harvard University Press, p.&nbs1 Chapter-preview links, ppvii–xi It has appli ...
and
probability theory
Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expressing it through a set o ...
which led to later development of more comprehensive approaches by other scholars;
Banach-Steinhaus theorem
In mathematics, the uniform boundedness principle or Banach–Steinhaus theorem is one of the fundamental results in functional analysis
Functional analysis is a branch of mathematical analysis, the core of which is formed by the study of ve ...
*
LWS, an abbreviation name used by Polish aircraft manufacturer ''Lubelska Wytwórnia Samolotów'' (1936–1939)
*
PZL
PZL (''Państwowe Zakłady Lotnicze'' - State Aviation Works) was the main Polish aerospace manufacturer of the interwar period, and a brand of their aircraft. Based in Warsaw between 1928 and 1939, PZL introduced a variety of well-regarded air ...
, an abbreviation name used by Polish aerospace manufacturers (1928–present)
*
RWD, an abbreviation name used by Polish aircraft manufacturer (1920–1940)
*
TKS
The TK (TK-3) and TKS were Polish tankettes developed during the 1930s and used in the Second World War.
Design and development
The TK (also known as the TK-3) tankette was a Polish design produced from 1931 based on the chassis of the British C ...
, a tankette (1931)
*
Stetysz (1929), Polish automobile manufacture by engineer and inventor,
Stefan Tyszkiewicz
Stefan Eugeniusz Tyszkiewicz, in Polish, Stefan Eugeniusz Maria Tyszkiewicz-Łohojski z Landwarowa, Leliwa coat of arms, (born 24 November 1894 in Warsaw, died 6 February 1976 in London) was a member of the Polish nobility, landowner, engineer, i ...
*
RWD-1
The RWD 1 was a Polish sports plane of 1928, a single-engine high-wing monoplane constructed by the RWD design team.
Development
The RWD 1 was the first aircraft constructed by the RWD team of Stanisław Rogalski, Stanisław Wigura and Jerzy ...
, sports plane of 1928, constructed by the
RWD
*
Wz. 35 anti-tank rifle
The Model 35 antitank rifle (''Karabin przeciwpancerny wzór 35'', abbreviated "''kb ppanc wz. 35''") was a Polish 7.9 mm anti-tank rifle used by the Polish Army during the 1939 Invasion of Poland. It was designated model 35 for its desi ...
, Polish 7.9 mm
anti-tank rifle used by the
Polish Army during the
Invasion of Poland
The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week aft ...
of 1939
*
Marian Smoluchowski
Marian Smoluchowski (; 28 May 1872 – 5 September 1917) was a Polish physicist who worked in the Polish territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was a pioneer of statistical physics, and an avid mountaineer.
Life
Born into an upper-c ...
, Polish scientist, pioneer of statistical physics - *
Einstein–Smoluchowski relation
In physics (specifically, the kinetic theory of gases), the Einstein relation is a previously unexpected connection revealed independently by William Sutherland in 1904, Albert Einstein in 1905, and by Marian Smoluchowski in 1906 in their works on ...
,
Smoluchowski coagulation equation,
Feynman-Smoluchowski ratchet
In the philosophy of thermal and statistical physics, the Brownian ratchet or Feynman–Smoluchowski ratchet is an apparent perpetual motion machine of the second kind (converting thermal energy into mechanical work), first analysed in 1912 as a ...
*
Kazimierz Fajans
Kazimierz Fajans (Kasimir Fajans in many American publications; 27 May 1887 – 18 May 1975) was a Polish American physical chemist of Polish-Jewish origin, a pioneer in the science of radioactivity and the discoverer of chemical element protact ...
, Polish physical chemist, the discoverer of chemical element
protactinium
*
Kazimierz Funk
Kazimierz Funk (; February 23, 1884 – November 19, 1967), commonly anglicized as Casimir Funk, was a Polish-American biochemist generally credited with being among the first to formulate (in 1912) the concept of vitamins, which he called "vita ...
, Polish biochemist, credited with formulating the concept of
vitamines
*
Alfred Tarski, a renowned Polish logician, mathematician and philosopher;
Banach-Tarski paradox,
Tarski's axioms
Tarski's axioms, due to Alfred Tarski, are an axiom set for the substantial fragment of Euclidean geometry that is formulable in first-order logic with identity, and requiring no set theory (i.e., that part of Euclidean geometry that is formulabl ...
,
Tarski's undefinability theorem
Tarski's undefinability theorem, stated and proved by Alfred Tarski in 1933, is an important limitative result in mathematical logic, the foundations of mathematics, and in formal semantics. Informally, the theorem states that ''arithmetical truth ...
,
semantic theory of truth,
Tarski monster group
In the area of modern algebra known as group theory, a Tarski monster group, named for Alfred Tarski, is an infinite group ''G'', such that every proper subgroup ''H'' of ''G'', other than the identity subgroup, is a cyclic group of order a fixed ...
,
Jónsson–Tarski duality
In logic, general frames (or simply frames) are Kripke frames with an additional structure, which are used to model modal and intermediate logics. The general frame semantics combines the main virtues of Kripke semantics and algebraic semantics: ...
*
Wacław Sierpiński
Wacław Franciszek Sierpiński (; 14 March 1882 – 21 October 1969) was a Polish mathematician. He was known for contributions to set theory (research on the axiom of choice and the continuum hypothesis), number theory, theory of functions, and to ...
, known for outstanding contributions to
set theory
Set theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies sets, which can be informally described as collections of objects. Although objects of any kind can be collected into a set, set theory, as a branch of mathematics, is mostly conce ...
(research on the
axiom of choice
In mathematics, the axiom of choice, or AC, is an axiom of set theory equivalent to the statement that ''a Cartesian product of a collection of non-empty sets is non-empty''. Informally put, the axiom of choice says that given any collectio ...
and the
continuum hypothesis),
number theory
Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic function, integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777� ...
, theory of functions and
topology
In mathematics, topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformations, such ...
;
Sierpiński triangle
The Sierpiński triangle (sometimes spelled ''Sierpinski''), also called the Sierpiński gasket or Sierpiński sieve, is a fractal curve, fractal attractive fixed set with the overall shape of an equilateral triangle, subdivided recursion, recu ...
,
Sierpiński carpet
The Sierpiński carpet is a plane fractal first described by Wacław Sierpiński in 1916. The carpet is a generalization of the Cantor set to two dimensions; another is Cantor dust.
The technique of subdividing a shape into smaller copies of i ...
,
Sierpiński curve
Sierpiński curves are a recursively defined sequence of continuous closed plane fractal curves discovered by Wacław Sierpiński, which in the limit n \to \infty completely fill the unit square: thus their limit curve, also called the Sierpińs ...
,
Sierpiński number In number theory, a Sierpiński number is an odd natural number ''k'' such that k \times 2^n + 1 is composite for all natural numbers ''n''. In 1960, Wacław Sierpiński proved that there are infinitely many odd integers ''k'' which have this pro ...
*
Aleksander Jabłoński
Professor Aleksander Jabłoński (born 26 February 1898 in Woskresenówka, in Imperial Russia, died 9 September 1980 in Skierniewice, Poland) was a Polish physicist and member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. His research was in molecular spect ...
, Polish physicist, known for
Jablonski diagram Jabłoński (Polish pronunciation: ; feminine: Jabłońska; plural: Jabłońscy) is a Polish surname derived from the noun ''jabłoń'' (''apple tree''). It appears in various forms when transliterated from Cyrillic alphabets.
People
* Aleksan ...
*
Franciszek Mertens, mathematician,
Mertens function,
Mertens conjecture
In mathematics, the Mertens conjecture is the statement that the Mertens function M(n) is bounded by \pm\sqrt. Although now disproven, it had been shown to imply the Riemann hypothesis. It was conjectured by Thomas Joannes Stieltjes, in an 1885 ...
,
Mertens's theorems
*
Josef Hofmann
Josef Casimir Hofmann (originally Józef Kazimierz Hofmann; January 20, 1876February 16, 1957) was a Polish-American pianist, composer, music teacher, and inventor.
Biography
Josef Hofmann was born in Podgórze (a district of Kraków), in Aus ...
, designer of first
windscreen wipers
A windscreen wiper, windshield wiper, wiper blade (American English), or simply wiper, is a device used to remove rain, snow, ice, washer fluid, water, or debris from a vehicle's front window. Almost all motor vehicles, including cars, truck ...
*
Rudolf Weigl, Polish
biologist
A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...
and inventor of the first effective vaccine against epidemic
typhus
Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure.
...
*
Ludwik Hirszfeld, Polish
microbiologist
A microbiologist (from Ancient Greek, Greek ) is a scientist who studies microscopic life forms and processes. This includes study of the growth, interactions and characteristics of Microorganism, microscopic organisms such as bacteria, algae, f ...
and
serologist. He is considered a co-discoverer of the inheritance of
ABO blood types
*
Stephanie Kwolek
Stephanie Louise Kwolek (; July 31, 1923 – June 18, 2014) was a Polish-American chemist who is known for inventing Kevlar. Her career at the DuPont company spanned more than 40 years. She discovered the first of a family of synthetic fibers of ...
, American chemist of Polish origin, inventor of
Kevlar
*
Andrzej Tarkowski
Andrzej Krzysztof Tarkowski (4 May 1933 – 23 September 2016) was a Polish embryologist and a professor at Warsaw University. He is best known for his pioneering researches on embryos and blastomeres, which have created theoretical and practica ...
, Polish
embryologist
Embryology (from Greek ἔμβρυον, ''embryon'', "the unborn, embryo"; and -λογία, '' -logia'') is the branch of animal biology that studies the prenatal development of gametes (sex cells), fertilization, and development of embryos and ...
and Professor of
Warsaw University, known for his pioneering researches on embryos and blastomeres, which have created theoretical and practical basis for achievements of biology and medicine of the twentieth century -
in vitro fertilization
In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is a process of fertilisation where an egg is combined with sperm in vitro ("in glass"). The process involves monitoring and stimulating an individual's ovulatory process, removing an ovum or ova (egg or eggs) ...
,
cloning and stem cell discovery
*
Michał Kalecki, Polish
economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
; he has been called "one of the most distinguished economists of the 20th century", he made major theoretical and practical contributions in the areas of the
business cycle,
growth
Growth may refer to:
Biology
* Auxology, the study of all aspects of human physical growth
* Bacterial growth
* Cell growth
* Growth hormone, a peptide hormone that stimulates growth
* Human development (biology)
* Plant growth
* Secondary growth ...
,
full employment
Full employment is a situation in which there is no cyclical or unemployment#Cyclical unemployment, deficient-demand unemployment. Full employment does not entail the disappearance of all unemployment, as other kinds of unemployment, namely Structu ...
,
income distribution, the political boom cycle, the oligopolistic economy, and
risk
In simple terms, risk is the possibility of something bad happening. Risk involves uncertainty about the effects/implications of an activity with respect to something that humans value (such as health, well-being, wealth, property or the environme ...
; he offered a synthesis that integrated Marxist class analysis and the then-new literature on
oligopoly theory
An oligopoly (from Greek ὀλίγος, ''oligos'' "few" and πωλεῖν, ''polein'' "to sell") is a market structure in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of large sellers or producers. Oligopolies often result from ...
, and his work had a significant influence on both the
Neo-Marxian and
Post-Keynesian
Post-Keynesian economics is a school of economic thought with its origins in ''The General Theory'' of John Maynard Keynes, with subsequent development influenced to a large degree by Michał Kalecki, Joan Robinson, Nicholas Kaldor, Sidney Wei ...
schools of economic thought; he was also one of the first macroeconomists to apply
mathematical models
A mathematical model is a description of a system using mathematical concepts and language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed mathematical modeling. Mathematical models are used in the natural sciences (such as physics, b ...
and statistical data to economic questions.
*
Stefan Bryła
Stefan Władysław Bryła (Polish pronunciation: ; born 17 August 1886 in Kraków – died 3 December 1943 in Warsaw, Poland) was a Polish construction engineer and welding pioneer. He designed and built the first welded road bridge in the world ...
, Polish construction engineer and
welding
Welding is a fabrication (metal), fabrication process that joins materials, usually metals or thermoplastics, by using high heat to melt the parts together and allowing them to cool, causing Fusion welding, fusion. Welding is distinct from lower ...
pioneer; he designed and built
the first welded road bridge in the world as well as the
Prudential building in Warsaw, one of the first European skyscrapers
*
Kazimierz Zarankiewicz
Kazimierz Zarankiewicz (2 May 1902 – 5 September 1959) was a Polish mathematician and Professor at the Warsaw University of Technology who was interested primarily in topology and graph theory.
Biography
Zarankiewicz was born in Częstochowa. ...
, Polish mathematician who was primarily interested in
topology
In mathematics, topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformations, such ...
and
graph theory
In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conne ...
known for
Zarankiewicz problem
The Zarankiewicz problem, an unsolved problem in mathematics, asks for the largest possible number of edges in a bipartite graph that has a given number of vertices and has no complete bipartite subgraphs of a given size.. Reprint of 1978 Academi ...
and
Zarankiewicz crossing number conjecture
*
Ralph Modjeski, Polish
civil engineer
A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...
who achieved prominence as a pre-eminent bridge designer in the United States
*
Wojciech Świętosławski, Polish chemist and physicist, considered the father of
thermochemistry
*
Józef Tykociński, Polish
engineer
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...
and a pioneer of
sound-on-film technology
*
Tadeusz Sędzimir, Polish engineer and inventor in the field of
mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...
and
metallurgy
Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys.
Metallurgy encompasses both the sc ...
*
Mieczysław Mąkosza, Polish
chemist
A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe th ...
specializing in organic synthesis and investigation of organic mechanisms; he is credited for the discovery of the aromatic
vicarious nucleophilic substitution, VNS; he also contributed to the discovery of
phase transfer catalysis
In chemistry, a phase-transfer catalyst or PTC is a catalyst that facilitates the transition of a reactant from one phase into another phase where reaction occurs. Phase-transfer catalysis is a special form of heterogeneous catalysis. Ionic reac ...
reactions
*
Bronisław Malinowski
Bronisław Kasper Malinowski (; 7 April 1884 – 16 May 1942) was a Polish-British anthropologist and ethnologist whose writings on ethnography, social theory, and field research have exerted a lasting influence on the discipline of anthropol ...
, Polish
anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
, often considered one of the most important 20th-century anthropologists;
participatory observation
Participant observation is one type of data collection method by Practitioner–scholar model, practitioner-scholars typically used in qualitative research and ethnography. This type of methodology is employed in many disciplines, particularly an ...
*
Mirosław Hermaszewski
Mirosław Hermaszewski (; 15 September 1941 – 12 December 2022) was a Polish cosmonaut, fighter plane pilot, and Polish Air Force officer. He became the first, and at the time of his death in December 2022, the only, Polish national in space ...
,
Polish Air Force
The Polish Air Force ( pl, Siły Powietrzne, , Air Forces) is the aerial warfare branch of the Polish Armed Forces. Until July 2004 it was officially known as ''Wojska Lotnicze i Obrony Powietrznej'' (). In 2014 it consisted of roughly 16,425 mil ...
officer and
cosmonaut; the first Polish person in space
*
Henryk Arctowski
Henryk Arctowski (15 July 1871 – 21 February 1958; ), born Henryk Artzt, was a Polish scientist and explorer. Living in exile for a large part of his life, he was one of the first persons to winter in Antarctica and became an internationally ...
, Polish scientist, explorer and an internationally renowned
meteorologist; a pioneer in the exploration of
Antarctica
Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...
*
Józef Paczoski
Józef Konrad Paczoski (1864-1942) was an eminent Polish Botany, botanist, who coined the term "Phytosociology"Rabotnov TA. 1970-1979Phytocoenology. In: The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd ed./ref> and was one of the founders of this branch of bot ...
, Polish
botanist
Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...
; he coined the term of
phytosociology and was one of the founders of this branch of botany
*
Stefan Drzewiecki
Stefan Drzewiecki (russian: Джеве́цкий Степа́н Ка́рлович (Казими́рович); 26 July 1844, Kunka, Podolia, Russian Empire (today Ukraine) – 23 April 1938, Paris) was a Polish scientist, journalist, engineer, con ...
, Polish scientist, journalist, engineer, constructor and inventor; he developed several models of propeller-driven
submarine
A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...
s that evolved from single-person vessels to a four-man model; he developed the theory of gliding flight, developed a method for the manufacture of ship and plane propellers (1892), and presented a general theory for screw-propeller thrust (1920); he also developed several models of early submarines for the
Russian Navy, and devised a torpedo-launching system for ships and submarines that bears his name, the
Drzewiecki drop collar
The Drzewiecki drop collar was an external torpedo launching system most commonly used by the French and Imperial Russian Navies in the first two decades of the 20th century. It was designed by Stefan Drzewiecki, a Polish engineer and inventor ...
; he also made an instrument that drew the precise routes of ships onto a nautical chart; his work ''Theorie générale de l'hélice'' (1920), was honored by the
French Academy of Science as fundamental in the development of modern
propeller
A propeller (colloquially often called a screw if on a ship or an airscrew if on an aircraft) is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon ...
s.
*
Tadeusz Tański
Tadeusz Tański (11 March 1892 – 23 March 1941) was a Polish automobile engineer and the designer of, among others, the first Polish serially-built automobile, the CWS T-1.
He was born in Janów Podlaski to Czesław Tański, one of pioneers of P ...
, Polish automobile engineer and the designer of, among others, the first Polish serially-built automobile, the
CWS T-1
The CWS T-1 was the first serially-built car manufactured in Poland. A series of different cars based on the T-1 chassis designed by Tadeusz Tański (hence T-1) of the Centralne Warsztaty Samochodowe (hence CWS), it was the only motor car that c ...
*
Leonard Danilewicz Leonard Stanisław Danilewicz was a Polish engineer and, for some ten years before the outbreak of World War II, one of the four directors of the AVA Radio Company in Warsaw, Poland.
Cipher Bureau work
AVA designed and built radio equipment for the ...
, Polish engineer, he came up with a concept for a
frequency-hopping spread spectrum
*
Florian Znaniecki, Polish sociologist and philosopher; he made significant contributions to
sociological theory and introduced such concepts as
humanistic coefficient and
culturalism In philosophy and sociology, culturalism (new humanism or Znaniecki's humanism) is the central importance of culture as an organizing force in human affairs.Hałas (2010), p. 12.Hałas (2010), p. 214.Dulczewski (1984), pp. 186–187. It is also desc ...
; he is the co-author of ''
The Polish Peasant in Europe and America
''The Polish Peasant in Europe and America'' is a book by Florian Znaniecki and William I. Thomas, considered to be one of the classics of sociology. The book is a study of Polish immigrants to the United States and their families, based on perso ...
'', which is considered the foundation of modern
empirical sociology
Empirical sociology is the study of sociology based on methodological methods and techniques for collecting, processing, and communicating primary sociological information. Describes the situation of the aspects of social life such as economy, law ...
*
Adolf Beck, Polish physiologist, a pioneer of
electroencephalography
Electroencephalography (EEG) is a method to record an electrogram of the spontaneous electrical activity of the brain. The biosignals detected by EEG have been shown to represent the postsynaptic potentials of pyramidal neurons in the neocortex ...
(EEG); in 1890 he published an investigation of spontaneous electrical activity of the brain of rabbits and dogs that included rhythmic oscillations altered by light; Beck started experiments on the electrical brain activity of animals; his observation of fluctuating brain activity led to the conclusion of
brain waves
*
Andrzej Schinzel
Andrzej Bobola Maria Schinzel (5 April 1937 – 21 August 2021) was a Polish mathematician studying mainly number theory.
Education
Schinzel received an MSc in 1958 at Warsaw University, Ph.D. in 1960 from Institute of Mathematics of the Pol ...
, Polish mathematician, studying mainly
number theory
Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic function, integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777� ...
;
Schinzel's hypothesis H,
Davenport–Schinzel sequence
*
Władysław Starewicz
Ladislas Starevich (russian: Владисла́в Алекса́ндрович Старе́вич, pl, Władysław Starewicz; August 8, 1882 – February 26, 1965) was a Polish-Russian stop-motion animator notable as the author of the first pu ...
, Polish-Russian pioneering film director and
stop-motion
Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames i ...
animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images, known as frames, which give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, and video gam ...
, he is notable as the author of the first puppet-animated film i.e. ''The Beautiful Lukanida'' (1912)
*
Walery Jaworski, one of the pioneers of
gastroenterology
Gastroenterology (from the Greek gastḗr- “belly”, -énteron “intestine”, and -logía "study of") is the branch of medicine focused on the digestive system and its disorders. The digestive system consists of the gastrointestinal tract ...
in Poland; he described bacteria living in the human stomach and speculated that they were responsible for
stomach ulcers,
gastric cancer
Stomach cancer, also known as gastric cancer, is a cancer that develops from the lining of the stomach. Most cases of stomach cancers are gastric carcinomas, which can be divided into a number of subtypes, including gastric adenocarcinomas. Lymph ...
and
achylia
Achlorhydria and hypochlorhydria refer to states where the production of hydrochloric acid in gastric secretions of the stomach and other digestive organs is absent or low, respectively. It is associated with various other medical problems.
Sign ...
. It was one of the first observations of
Helicobacter pylori. He published those findings in 1899 in a book titled "Podręcznik chorób żołądka" ("Handbook of Gastric Diseases"). His findings were independently confirmed by
Robin Warren
John Robin Warren (born 11 June 1937, in Adelaide) is an Australian pathologist, Nobel Laureate and researcher who is credited with the 1979 re-discovery of the bacterium ''Helicobacter pylori'', together with Barry Marshall. The duo proved t ...
and
Barry Marshall, who received the
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
in 2005
*
Witold Hurewicz
Witold Hurewicz (June 29, 1904 – September 6, 1956) was a Polish mathematician.
Early life and education
Witold Hurewicz was born in Łódź, at the time one of the main Polish industrial hubs with economy focused on the textile industry. His ...
, Polish mathematician;
Hurewicz space In mathematics, a Hurewicz space is a topological space that satisfies a certain basic selection principle that generalizes σ-compactness. A Hurewicz space is a space in which for every sequence of open covers \mathcal_1, \mathcal_2, \ldots of the ...
,
Hurewicz theorem
In mathematics, the Hurewicz theorem is a basic result of algebraic topology, connecting homotopy theory with homology theory via a map known as the Hurewicz homomorphism. The theorem is named after Witold Hurewicz, and generalizes earlier results ...
*
Józef Wierusz-Kowalski
Józef Wierusz-Kowalski (16 March 1866 - 30 November 1927) was a Polish physicist and diplomat. He discovered the phenomenon of progressive phosphorescence. He served as Rector of the University of Freiburg, and helped to establish the section for ...
, Polish physicist, discoverer of the phenomenon of progressive
phosphorescence
Phosphorescence is a type of photoluminescence related to fluorescence. When exposed to light (radiation) of a shorter wavelength, a phosphorescent substance will glow, absorbing the light and reemitting it at a longer wavelength. Unlike fluo ...
1851–1900

*
Maria Skłodowska-Curie
Marie Salomea Skłodowska–Curie ( , , ; born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, ; 7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first ...
, Polish chemist and physicist, a pioneer in the field of
radioactivity, co-discoverer of the chemical elements
radium
Radium is a chemical element with the symbol Ra and atomic number 88. It is the sixth element in group 2 of the periodic table, also known as the alkaline earth metals. Pure radium is silvery-white, but it readily reacts with nitrogen (rather t ...
and
polonium
*
Zygmunt Florenty Wróblewski
Zygmunt Florenty Wróblewski (28 October 1845 – 16 April 1888) was a Polish physicist and chemist.
Biography
Wróblewski was born in Grodno (Russian Empire, now in Belarus). He studied at Kiev University. After a six-year exile for participati ...
and
Karol Olszewski
Karol Stanisław Olszewski (29 January 1846 – 24 March 1915) was a Polish chemist, mathematician and physicist.
Biography
Olszewski was a graduate of Kazimierz Brodziński High School in Tarnów (I Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Kazimierza ...
, the first to liquefy oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a stable state (not, as had been the case up to then, in a dynamic state in the transitional form as vapour) (1833)
*Zygmunt Florenty Wróblewski discovers
carbon dioxide clathrate
Carbon dioxide hydrate or carbon dioxide clathrate is a snow-like crystalline substance composed of water ice and carbon dioxide. It normally is a Type I gas clathrate. There has also been some experimental evidence for the development of a metas ...
(1882)
*
Ignacy Łukasiewicz, Polish
pharmacist
A pharmacist, also known as a chemist (Commonwealth English) or a druggist (North American and, archaically, Commonwealth English), is a healthcare professional who prepares, controls and distributes medicines and provides advice and instructi ...
and
petroleum industry
The petroleum industry, also known as the oil industry or the oil patch, includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transportation (often by oil tankers and pipelines), and marketing of petroleum products. The larges ...
pioneer who in 1856 built the world's first
oil refinery
An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refined into useful products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, asphalt base, fuel oils, heating oil, kerosene, lique ...
; his achievements included the discovery of how to distill
kerosene
Kerosene, paraffin, or lamp oil is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid which is derived from petroleum. It is widely used as a fuel in aviation as well as households. Its name derives from el, κηρός (''keros'') meaning "wax", and was regi ...
from seep oil, the invention of the modern
kerosene lamp
A kerosene lamp (also known as a paraffin lamp in some countries) is a type of lighting device that uses kerosene as a fuel. Kerosene lamps have a wick or mantle as light source, protected by a glass chimney or globe; lamps may be used on a t ...
, the introduction of the first modern
street lamp
A street is a public thoroughfare in a built environment. It is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. A street can be as simple as a level patch of dirt, ...
in Europe, and the construction one of the world's first modern
oil well
An oil well is a drillhole boring in Earth that is designed to bring petroleum oil hydrocarbons to the surface. Usually some natural gas is released as associated petroleum gas along with the oil. A well that is designed to produce only gas may ...
*The
Polish Academy of Learning, an
academy of sciences, was founded in
Kraków
Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...
in 1872.
*
Stefan Drzewiecki
Stefan Drzewiecki (russian: Джеве́цкий Степа́н Ка́рлович (Казими́рович); 26 July 1844, Kunka, Podolia, Russian Empire (today Ukraine) – 23 April 1938, Paris) was a Polish scientist, journalist, engineer, con ...
built in 1884 the world's first electric submarine.
*
Casimir Zeglen, inventor of one of the first
bulletproof vest
A bulletproof vest, also known as a ballistic vest or a bullet-resistant vest, is an item of body armor that helps absorb the impact and reduce or stop penetration to the torso from firearm-fired projectiles and fragmentation from explosions. T ...
s
*
Jan Szczepanik, Polish inventor, with several hundred patents and over 50 discoveries to his name, many of which are still applied today, especially in the motion picture industry, as well as in photography and television, which include
telectroscope
:
The telectroscope (also referred to as 'electroscope') was the first conceptual model of a television or videophone system. The term was used in the 19th century to describe science-based systems of distant seeing.
The name and its concep ...
and
colorimeter
*
Edmund Biernacki, Polish pathologist, known for the
Biernacki reaction used worldwide to assess
erythrocyte sedimentation rate
The erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR or sed rate) is the rate at which red blood cells in anticoagulated whole blood descend in a standardized tube over a period of one hour. It is a common hematology test, and is a non-specific measure of ...
(ESR), which is one of the major
blood tests
A blood test is a laboratory analysis performed on a blood sample that is usually extracted from a vein in the arm using a hypodermic needle, or via fingerprick. Multiple tests for specific blood components, such as a glucose test or a cholester ...
*
Ludwik Gumplowicz, Polish
sociologist, "one of the founders of European sociology"
*
Antoni Leśniowski Antoni Leśniowski (January 28, 1867 – April 4, 1940) was a Polish surgeon, credited with publishing what may have been the earliest reports of the condition which later became known as Crohn's disease.
He graduated in medicine from the Uni ...
, Polish surgeon, discoverer of
Leśniowski-Crohn's disease
*
Edward Flatau
Edward Flatau (27 December 1868, Płock – 7 June 1932, Warsaw) was a Polish neurologist and psychiatrist. He was a co-founder of the modern Polish neurology, an authority on the physiology and pathology of meningitis, co-founder of medical jou ...
, Polish
neurologist and
psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...
, his name in medicine is linked to Redlich-Flatau syndrome, Flatau-Sterling
torsion dystonia
Torsion dystonia, also known as dystonia musculorum deformans, is a disease characterized by painful muscle contractions resulting in uncontrollable distortions. This specific type of dystonia is frequently found in children, with symptoms starti ...
, Flatau-Schidler disease and Flatau's law. He published a human brain atlas (1894), wrote a fundamental book on migraine (1912), established the localization principle of long fibers in the spinal cord (1893), and with Sterling published an early paper (1911) on progressive torsion spasm in children and suggested that the disease has a genetic component.
*
Kazimierz Prószyński
Kazimierz Prószyński (4 April 1875 – 13 March 1945) was a Polish inventor active in the field of cinematography. He patented his first film camera, called Pleograph, before the Lumière brothers, and later went on to improve the cinema pr ...
, Polish inventor active in the field of cinema; he patented his first film camera, called
Pleograph
Pleograph ( pl, Pleograf) was an early type of movie camera constructed in 1894, before those made by the Lumière brothers,Maciej Iłowiecki, "Dzieje nauki polskiej", Wydawnictwo Interpress, Warszawa 1981, , p.202 (Polish). by Polish inventor Kaz ...
, before the
Lumière brothers
Lumière is French for 'light'.
Lumiere, Lumière or Lumieres may refer to:
*Lumières, the philosophical movement in the Age of Enlightenment People
*Auguste and Louis Lumière, French pioneers in film-making Film and TV
* Institut Lumière, a ...
, and later went on to improve the cinema projector for the
Gaumont company, as well as invent the widely used hand-held
Aeroscope
Aeroscope was a type of compressed air camera for making films, constructed by Polish inventor Kazimierz Prószyński in 1909 (French patent from 10 April 1909) and built in England since 1911, at first by Newman & Sinclair, and from 1912 by C ...
camera
*
Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky
Mikhail Osipovich Dolivo-Dobrovolsky (russian: Михаи́л О́сипович Доли́во-Доброво́льский; german: Michail von Dolivo-Dobrowolsky or ''Michail Ossipowitsch Doliwo-Dobrowolski''; – ) was a Russian Empire ...
, Polish-Russian engineer and electrician; inventor of the
three-phase electric power
Three-phase electric power (abbreviated 3φ) is a common type of alternating current used in electricity generation, transmission, and distribution. It is a type of polyphase system employing three wires (or four including an optional neutral ...
system
*
Joseph Babinski, a
neurologist best known for his 1896 description of the
Babinski sign, a pathological plantar reflex indicative of corticospinal tract damage
*
Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, a Polish
linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
, he formulated the theory of the
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
and
phonetic alternations
*
Ernest Malinowski
Ernest Adam Malinowski (5 January 1818 – 2 March 1899) was a Polish civil engineer best known for constructing the world's highest railway at the time, the Ferrovias Central, in the Peruvian Andes between 1871–1876 .Norman Davies. ''God's ...
, Polish
engineer
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...
, he constructed at that time the world's highest railway
Ferrocarril Central Andino
Ferrocarril Central Andino (FCCA) is the consortium which operates the Ferrovías Central railway in Peru linking the Pacific port of Callao and the capital Lima with Huancayo and Cerro de Pasco. As one of the Trans-Andean Railways it is the seco ...
in the Peruvian
Andes
The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S ...
in 1871–1876
*
Bruno Abakanowicz, Polish mathematician and electrical engineer, inventor of the
integraph
An Integraph is a mechanical analog computing device for plotting the integral of a graphically defined function.
History
Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis first described the fundamental principal of a mechanical integraph in 1836 in the ''Journal ...
,
spirograph and parabolagraph
*
Stanisław Kierbedź, Polish-Russian
engineer
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...
, and military officer; he constructed the first permanent iron bridge over the
Vistula River
The Vistula (; pl, Wisła, ) is the longest river in Poland and the ninth-longest river in Europe, at in length. The drainage basin, reaching into three other nations, covers , of which is in Poland.
The Vistula rises at Barania Góra in ...
in
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
known as the
Kierbedź Bridge; he designed and supervised the construction of dozens of bridges, railway lines, ports and other objects in Central and Eastern Europe.
*
Felicjan Sypniewski
Felicjan Odrowąż Sypniewski, also known as Felicyan Sypniewski (24 January 1822 – 6 September 1877) was a Polish naturalist, botanist, entomologist, malacologist, algologist and philosopher.
His ground-breaking studies and scientific pub ...
, Polish
naturalist,
botanist
Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...
,
entomologist
Entomology () is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term "insect" was less specific, and historically the definition of entomology would also include the study of animals in other arthropod groups, such as arach ...
and philosopher; his ground-breaking studies and scientific publications laid down the foundations of
malacology
Malacology is the branch of invertebrate zoology that deals with the study of the Mollusca (mollusks or molluscs), the second-largest phylum of animals in terms of described species after the arthropods. Mollusks include snails and slugs, clams, ...
*
Ludwik Zamenhof
L. L. Zamenhof (15 December 185914 April 1917) was an ophthalmologist who lived for most of his life in Warsaw. He is best known as the creator of Esperanto, the most widely used constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language ...
, Polish medical doctor, inventor and writer; creator of
Esperanto
Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...
, the most successful
constructed language
A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. ...
in the world
*
Napoleon Cybulski
Napoleon Nikodem Cybulski (Polish pronunciation: ; 14 September 1854 – 26 April 1919) was a Polish physiologist and a pioneer of endocrinology and electroencephalography. In 1895, he isolated and identified adrenaline.
Life
Napoleon Cybulski wa ...
, Polish
physiologist
Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical a ...
and a pioneer of
endocrinology
Endocrinology (from '' endocrine'' + '' -ology'') is a branch of biology and medicine dealing with the endocrine system, its diseases, and its specific secretions known as hormones. It is also concerned with the integration of developmental event ...
and
electroencephalography
Electroencephalography (EEG) is a method to record an electrogram of the spontaneous electrical activity of the brain. The biosignals detected by EEG have been shown to represent the postsynaptic potentials of pyramidal neurons in the neocortex ...
; discoverer of
adrenaline
*
Wacław Mayzel, Polish
histologist; he described for the first time the process of
mitosis
In cell biology, mitosis () is a part of the cell cycle in which replicated chromosomes are separated into two new nuclei. Cell division by mitosis gives rise to genetically identical cells in which the total number of chromosomes is mainta ...
*
Antoni Patek
Antoni Norbert Patek (french: link=no, Antoine Norbert de Patek; 14 June 1812 – 1 March 1877) was a Polish pioneer in watchmaking and the creator of the Patek Philippe & Co., one of Swiss watchmaker companies, and Polish independence fighter and ...
, Polish pioneer in
watchmaking and a creator of
Patek Philippe & Co., one of the most famous watchmaker companies in the world
*
Ludwik Rydygier, Polish surgeon; in 1880, as the first in Poland and second in the world he succeeded in surgical removal of the
pylorus in a patient suffering from stomach cancer, he was also the first to document this procedure; in 1881, as the first in the world, he carried out a
peptic ulcer resection; in 1884 he introduced a new method of surgical peptic ulcer treatment using
Gastroenterostomy
A gastroenterostomy is the surgical creation of a connection between the stomach and the jejunum. The operation can sometimes be performed at the same time as a partial gastrectomy (the removal of part of the stomach). Gastroenterostomy was in the ...
; Rydygier proposed (1900) original concepts for removing prostatic adenoma and introduced many other surgical techniques that are successfully used to date
*
Jan Dzierżoń, a pioneering Polish
apiarist
A beekeeper is a person who keeps honey bees.
Beekeepers are also called honey farmers, apiarists, or less commonly, apiculturists (both from the Latin '' apis'', bee; cf. apiary). The term beekeeper refers to a person who keeps honey bees i ...
who discovered the phenomenon of
parthenogenesis
Parthenogenesis (; from the Greek grc, παρθένος, translit=parthénos, lit=virgin, label=none + grc, γένεσις, translit=génesis, lit=creation, label=none) is a natural form of asexual reproduction in which growth and development ...
in bees and designed the first successful movable-frame
beehive; his discoveries and innovations made him world-famous in scientific and bee-keeping circles; he has been described as "the father of
apiculture
Beekeeping (or apiculture) is the maintenance of bee colonies, commonly in man-made beehives. Honey bees in the genus '' Apis'' are the most-commonly-kept species but other honey-producing bees such as ''Melipona'' stingless bees are also kept. ...
"
*
Stanisław Leśniewski, philosopher and logician, known for coining the term
mereology
In logic, philosophy and related fields, mereology ( (root: , ''mere-'', 'part') and the suffix ''-logy'', 'study, discussion, science') is the study of parts and the wholes they form. Whereas set theory is founded on the membership relation bet ...
1801–1850
*
Ignacy Domeyko
Ignacy Domeyko or Domejko, pseudonym: ''Żegota'' ( es, Ignacio Domeyko, ; 31 July 1802 – 23 January 1889) was a Polish geologist, mineralogist, educator, and founder of the University of Santiago, in Chile. Domeyko spent most of his life, and ...
- geologist and mineralogist, a geological map of Chile, describing the Jurassic rock formations, and discovered deposits of a rare mineral (1846)
*
Paweł Strzelecki, Polish explorer and geologist; in 1840 he climbed the highest peak on mainland
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
and named it
Mount Kosciuszko; he made a geological and mineralogical survey of the
Gippsland region in present-day eastern
Victoria and from 1840 to 1842 he explored nearly every part of
Tasmania
)
, nickname =
, image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdi ...
; author of ''Physical Description of New South Wales'' (1845)
*
Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz - scholar, poet, and statesman
*
Ignacy Prądzyński, Polish
military commander and
general
A general officer is an Officer (armed forces), officer of highest military ranks, high rank in the army, armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry.
In some usages the term "general officer" refers t ...
; principal engineer and designer of the
Augustów Canal
be, Аўгустоўскі канал
, image = Bulwar w Augustowie.JPG
, image_caption = Augustów Canal in Augustów
, original_owner =
, engineer = Ignacy Prądzyński
, other_engineer = Jan Chrzciciel de Grandvill ...
*
Wojciech Jastrzębowski
Wojciech Jastrzębowski (19 April 1799 – 30 December 1882) was a Polish scientist, naturalist and inventor, professor of botany, physics, zoology and horticulture at Instytut Rolniczo-Leśny in Marymont in Warsaw, and insurgent of the November ...
, Polish scientist, naturalist and inventor, professor of botany, physics, zoology and horticulture; considered as one of the fathers of
ergonomics
1751–1800
*
Commission of National Education ( pl, Komisja Edukacji Narodowej), founded in 1773, was the world's first national
Ministry
Ministry may refer to:
Government
* Ministry (collective executive), the complete body of government ministers under the leadership of a prime minister
* Ministry (government department), a department of a government
Religion
* Christian ...
of
Education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
.
*
Stanisław Staszic was an outstanding Polish
philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
, statesman, Catholic priest,
geologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid, liquid, and gaseous matter that constitutes Earth and other terrestrial planets, as well as the processes that shape them. Geologists usually study geology, earth science, or geophysics, althou ...
, translator, poet and writer — almost a one-man
academy of sciences. The
Polish Academy of Sciences
The Polish Academy of Sciences ( pl, Polska Akademia Nauk, PAN) is a Polish state-sponsored institution of higher learning. Headquartered in Warsaw, it is responsible for spearheading the development of science across the country by a society of ...
'
Staszic Palace
Staszic Palace ( pl, Pałac Staszica, ) is an edifice at ulica Nowy Świat 72, Warsaw, Poland. It is the seat of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
History
Origin
The history of the Staszic Palace dates from 1620, when King Sigismund III of Poland ...
, in
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
, is named after him; one of the founding fathers of the
Constitution of May 3, 1791
The Constitution of 3 May 1791,; lt, Gegužės trečiosios konstitucija titled the Governance Act, was a constitution adopted by the Great Sejm ("Four-Year Sejm", meeting in 1788–1792) for the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a dual mo ...
- the world's second and Europe's first written constitution and a crowning achievement of the
Polish Enlightenment
*
Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński, Polish Messianist
philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
,
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
,
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...
,
inventor
An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...
,
lawyer
A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solic ...
, and
economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
; he is credited with formulating the
Wronskian
1601–1650
*
Johannes Hevelius was an astronomer who published the earliest exact maps of the moon and the most complete star catalog of his time, containing 1,564 stars. In 1641 he built an observatory in his house; he is known as "the founder of lunar topography"
*
Jan Brożek (''Ioannes Broscius'') was the most prominent 17th-century Polish mathematician. Following his death, his collection of
Nicolaus Copernicus
Nicolaus Copernicus (; pl, Mikołaj Kopernik; gml, Niklas Koppernigk, german: Nikolaus Kopernikus; 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic Church, Catholic cano ...
' letters and documents, which he had borrowed 40 years earlier with the intent of writing a biography of Copernicus, was lost.
*
Kazimierz Siemienowicz
Kazimierz Siemienowicz ( la, Casimirus Siemienowicz, lt, Kazimieras Simonavičius; born 1600 – 1651) was a general of artillery, gunsmith, military engineer, and one of pioneers of rocketry. Born in the Raseiniai region of the Grand Duchy o ...
,
Polish–Lithuanian general of artillery, gunsmith, military engineer, and pioneer of
rocket
A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely fr ...
ry
*
Michał Boym, Polish
Jesuit
, image = Ihs-logo.svg
, image_size = 175px
, caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits
, abbreviation = SJ
, nickname = Jesuits
, formation =
, founders ...
missionary to China, scientist and explorer; he is notable as one of the first westerners to travel within the Chinese mainland, and the author of numerous works on Asian fauna, flora and geography
*
Krzysztof Arciszewski
Krzysztof Arciszewski (9 December 1592 in Rogalin – 7 April 1656 near Gdańsk (Danzig), Poland) was a Polish nobleman, military officer, engineer, and ethnographer. Arciszewski also served as a general of artillery for the Netherlands and Poland ...
,
Polish–Lithuanian nobleman, military officer, engineer, and ethnographer. Arciszewski also served as a general of artillery for the
Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands
, established_title = Before independence
, established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
and
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
*
Jan Jonston
John Jonston or Johnston ( pl, Jan Jonston; la, Joannes or or ; 15 September 1603– ) was a Polish scholar and physician, descended from Scottish nobility and closely associated with the Polish magnate Leszczyński family.
Life
Jonston wa ...
, Polish scholar and physician of Scottish descent; author of ''Thautomatographia naturalis'' (1632) and ''Idea universae medicinae practicae'' (1642)
*
Michał Sędziwój, Polish
alchemist
Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscience, protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in Chinese alchemy, C ...
,
philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
, and medical doctor; a pioneer of
chemistry
Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...
, he developed ways of purification and creation of various acids, metals and other chemical compounds; he discovered that air is not a single substance and contains a life-giving substance-later called
oxygen
Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as wel ...
170 years before similar discoveries by
Scheele
Scheele is a surname of Germanic origin. Notable people with the surname include:
*Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1742–1786), German-Swedish pharmaceutical chemist
*George Heinrich Adolf Scheele (1808–1864), German botanist
* Karin Scheele (b. 1968), ...
and
Priestley
Priestley may refer to:
Places
* Priestley, West Virginia, US, an unincorporated community
* Priestley Glacier, a major valley glacier in Antarctica
* Priestley (lunar crater), on the far side of the Moon
* Priestley (Martian crater)
* 5577 P ...
; he correctly identified this 'food of life' with the gas (also oxygen) given off by heating nitre (
saltpetre
Potassium nitrate is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . This alkali metal nitrate salt is also known as Indian saltpetre (large deposits of which were historically mined in India). It is an ionic salt of potassium ions K+ and nitra ...
); this substance, the 'central nitre', had a central position in Sendivogius' schema of the universe.
1551–1600
*
Bartholomäus Keckermann
Bartholomäus Keckermann (c. 1572 – 25 August (or July) 1609) was a German writer, Calvinist theologian and philosopher. He is known for his ''Analytic Method''. As a writer on rhetoric, he is compared to Gerhard Johann Vossius, and consider ...
, ''A Short Commentary on
Navigation
Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another.Bowditch, 2003:799. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navigation, ...
'' (the first one written in Poland)
*
Josephus Struthius
Josephus Struthius (Polish: Józef Struś; 1510 in Poznań – between 27 July 1568 and 26 January 1569 in Poznań) was a Polish professor of medicine in Padua (1535–1537) and personal doctor of Polish kings. He also served as mayor of Poznań i ...
, he published in 1555 ''Sphygmicae artis iam mille ducentos perditae et desideratae libri V.'' in which he described five types of
pulse, the diagnostic meaning of those types, and the influence of body temperature and nervous system on pulse. This was one of books used by
William Harvey in his works
*
Sebastian Petrycy
Sebastian Petrycy of Pilzno (born 1554 in Pilzno – died 1626 in Kraków), in Latin known as Sebastianus Petricius, was a Polish philosopher and physician. He lectured and published notable works in the field of medicine but is principally remem ...
, Polish
philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
and physician who lectured and published notable works in the field of medicine
1501–1550
*''
De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium
''De revolutionibus orbium coelestium'' (English translation: ''On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres'') is the seminal work on the heliocentric theory of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) of the Polish Renaissance. The book, ...
'' (On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres). Nicolaus Copernicus began writing ''De Revolutionibus'' in 1506, and finished in 1530.
*
Nicolaus Copernicus
Nicolaus Copernicus (; pl, Mikołaj Kopernik; gml, Niklas Koppernigk, german: Nikolaus Kopernikus; 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic Church, Catholic cano ...
was a
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
polymath
A polymath ( el, πολυμαθής, , "having learned much"; la, homo universalis, "universal human") is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific pro ...
— an astronomer, mathematician, physician, lawyer, clergyman, governor, diplomat, military leader, classics scholar and economist, who developed the
heliocentric theory in a form detailed enough to make it scientifically useful, and described "
Gresham's Law" the year (1519) that
Thomas Gresham
Sir Thomas Gresham the Elder (; c. 151921 November 1579), was an English merchant and financier who acted on behalf of King Edward VI (1547–1553) and Edward's half-sisters, queens Mary I (1553–1558) and Elizabeth I (1558–1603). In 1565 G ...
was born
*
Marcin of Urzędów, Polish
Roman Catholic
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
priest,
physician
A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
,
pharmacist
A pharmacist, also known as a chemist (Commonwealth English) or a druggist (North American and, archaically, Commonwealth English), is a healthcare professional who prepares, controls and distributes medicines and provides advice and instructi ...
and
botanist
Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...
known especially for his ''Herbarz polski'' ("Polish
Herbal
A herbal is a book containing the names and descriptions of plants, usually with information on their medicinal, tonic, culinary, toxic, hallucinatory, aromatic, or magical powers, and the legends associated with them.Arber, p. 14. A herbal m ...
")
*
Adam of Łowicz Adam of Łowicz (also "Adam of Bocheń" and "''Adamus Polonus''"; born in Bocheń, near Łowicz, Poland; died 7 February 1514, in Kraków, Poland) was a professor of medicine at the University of Krakow, its rector in 1510–1511, a humanist, write ...
, Polish physician, philosopher, and
humanist; author of
*
Albert Brudzewski
Albert Brudzewski, ''also'' Albert Blar (of Brudzewo), Albert of Brudzewo or Wojciech Brudzewski (in Latin, ''Albertus de Brudzewo''; c.1445–c.1497) was a Polish astronomer, mathematician, philosopher and diplomat.
Life
Albert (in Polish, ...
, Polish astronomer, mathematician, philosopher and diplomat; known for establishing the Moon's elliptical orbit; author of
1351–1400
*
Kraków Academy
The Jagiellonian University (Polish: ''Uniwersytet Jagielloński'', UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and the 13th oldest university in ...
(''Akademia Krakowska'') founded in 1364 by King
Kazimierz the Great
Casimir III the Great ( pl, Kazimierz III Wielki; 30 April 1310 – 5 November 1370) reigned as the King of Poland from 1333 to 1370. He also later became King of Ruthenia in 1340, and fought to retain the title in the Galicia-Volhynia Wars. He wa ...
.
1251–1300
*
Witelo
Vitello ( pl, Witelon; german: Witelo; – 1280/1314) was a friar, theologian, natural philosopher and an important figure in the history of philosophy in Poland.
Name
Vitello's name varies with some sources. In earlier publications he was quo ...
(ca. 1230 – ca. 1314), was a philosopher and a scientist who specialized in
optics
Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviole ...
. His famous optical treatise, ''Perspectiva'', which drew on the Arabic ''
Book of Optics
The ''Book of Optics'' ( ar, كتاب المناظر, Kitāb al-Manāẓir; la, De Aspectibus or ''Perspectiva''; it, Deli Aspecti) is a seven-volume treatise on optics and other fields of study composed by the medieval Arab scholar Ibn al- ...
'' by
Alhazen
Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham, Latinized as Alhazen (; full name ; ), was a medieval mathematician, astronomer, and physicist of the Islamic Golden Age from present-day Iraq.For the description of his main fields, see e.g. ("He is one of the prin ...
, was unique in
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
literature and helped give rise to
Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon (; la, Rogerus or ', also '' Rogerus''; ), also known by the scholastic accolade ''Doctor Mirabilis'', was a medieval English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empiri ...
's best work. In addition to optics, Witelo's treatise made important contributions to the
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
of
visual perception
Visual perception is the ability to interpret the surrounding environment through photopic vision (daytime vision), color vision, scotopic vision (night vision), and mesopic vision (twilight vision), using light in the visible spectrum reflecte ...
.
See also
*
List of Poles
References
External links
Science in Poland, 2001-058 Ways We've Made Your Life Better
{{Inventions
Polish history timelines
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
*
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...