Stanislaw Tołpa (3 November 1901, Ruda Łańcucka – 11 October 1996, Wrocław) was a Polish professor of botany. He has developed a method of peat preparation called by his name.
Tołpa, born into a poor peasant family in eastern Poland, graduated theologian, then studied
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
Lwów University
The University of Lviv ( uk, Львівський університет, Lvivskyi universytet; pl, Uniwersytet Lwowski; german: Universität Lemberg, briefly known as the ''Theresianum'' in the early 19th century), presently the Ivan Franko Na ...
peatlands
A mire, peatland, or quagmire is a wetland area dominated by living peat-forming plants. Mires arise because of incomplete decomposition of organic matter, usually litter from vegetation, due to water-logging and subsequent anoxia. All types ...
in
Chornohora
Chornohora (literally: "Black Mountain"; uk, Чорногора, romanized: ''Chornohora'') is the highest mountain range in Western Ukraine. It is within the Polonynian Beskids, a subgroup of the mountain group of Eastern Beskids, which in turn ...
rector
Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to:
Style or title
*Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations
*Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...
. He habilitated and received the title of professor.
His entire research career was devoted to peat. Under his leadership, marshes and peat bogs have been studied in the
Biebrza
Biebrza ( lt, Bebras, '' be, Bobra'', ''german: Bober'') is a river in northeastern Poland, a tributary of the Narew river (near Wizna), with a length of and a basin area of 7,092 km2 (7,067 in Poland).Hawaii, and in the
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 ...
region. He has developed a classification of European peats. Over time, his interests shifted from the history and morphology of the peat to chemical and biological properties of its components. He detected compounds with specific biological activity. Johnson and Johnson eventually bought his life work. His only child inherited his wealth. She currently resides in Poland.
Based on his research in the 1960 a peat preparation made him famous, used in patients with
multiple sclerosis
Multiple (cerebral) sclerosis (MS), also known as encephalomyelitis disseminata or disseminated sclerosis, is the most common demyelinating disease, in which the insulating covers of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord are damaged. This d ...
. He was one of the founders of the Wroclaw branch of the Polish Academy of Sciences. His research also contributed to the protection of peat deposits in Poland.
After his retirement in 1971, he continued research within his laboratory of Biology and Biochemistry of Peat at Agricultural University in Wrocław.
Patent for the manufacture of the preparation was ceded to the university. He died at the age of 95.