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 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, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...

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 canon, who formulated ...

, who formulated the heliocentric theory and made an important contribution to the scientific revolution. In 1773 King Stanisław August Poniatowski established the

Commission of National Education The Commission of National Education ( pl, Komisja Edukacji Narodowej, KEN; lt, Edukacinė komisija) was the central educational authority in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, created by the Sejm and King Stanisław II August on October 1 ...

, the world's first ministry of education. After the

third partition of Poland The Third Partition of Poland (1795) was the last in a series of the Partitions of Poland–Lithuania and the land of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth among Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy, and the Russian Empire which effectively ended Polis ...

, 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, 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 The Lwów school of mathematics ( pl, lwowska szkoła matematyczna) was a group of Polish mathematicians who worked in the interwar period in Lwów, Poland (since 1945 Lviv, Ukraine). The mathematicians often met at the famous Scottish Café to ...

(with

Stefan Banach Stefan Banach ( ; 30 March 1892 – 31 August 1945) was a Polish mathematician who is generally considered one of the 20th century's most important and influential mathematicians. He was the founder of modern functional analysis, and an origina ...

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 Un ...

Stanisław Ulam Stanisław Marcin Ulam (; 13 April 1909 – 13 May 1984) was a Polish-American scientist in the fields of mathematics and nuclear physics. He participated in the Manhattan Project, originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapon ...

) and

Warsaw School of Mathematics Warsaw School of Mathematics is the name given to a group of mathematicians who worked at Warsaw, Poland, in the two decades between the World Wars, especially in the fields of logic, set theory, point-set topology and real analysis. They pu ...

(with

Alfred Tarski Alfred Tarski (, born Alfred Teitelbaum;School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews ''School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews''. January 14, 1901 – October 26, 1983) was a Polish-American logician a ...

Kazimierz Kuratowski Kazimierz Kuratowski (; 2 February 1896 – 18 June 1980) was a Polish mathematician and logician. He was one of the leading representatives of the Warsaw School of Mathematics. Biography and studies Kazimierz Kuratowski was born in Warsaw, (t ...

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 t ...

). 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 opposing ...

pushed many of them into exile. Such was the case of

Benoît 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 ...

, whose family left Poland when he was still a child. An alumnus of the Warsaw School of Mathematics was

Antoni Zygmund Antoni Zygmund (December 25, 1900 – May 30, 1992) was a Polish mathematician. He worked mostly in the area of mathematical analysis, including especially harmonic analysis, and he is considered one of the greatest analysts of the 20th century. ...

, 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 agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

, 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,

, Lublin,

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 cant ...

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 Joh ...

Rzeszów Rzeszów ( , ; la, Resovia; yi, ריישא ''Raisha'')) is the largest city in southeastern Poland. It is located on both sides of the Wisłok River in the heartland of the Sandomierz Basin. Rzeszów has been the capital of the Subcarpathian ...

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 Olga Malinkiewicz (Polish pronunciation: ; born 26 November 1982) is a Polish physicist, inventor of a method of producing solar cells based on perovskites using inkjet printing. She is a co-founder and the Chief Technology Officer at Saule Tec ...

, 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 a ...

s using

inkjet printing Inkjet printing is a type of computer printing that recreates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper and plastic substrates. Inkjet printers were the most commonly used type of printer in 2008, and range from small inexpen ...

Asymmetric numeral systems Asymmetric numeral systems (ANS)J. Duda, K. Tahboub, N. J. Gadil, E. J. Delp''The use of asymmetric numeral systems as an accurate replacement for Huffman coding'' Picture Coding Symposium, 2015.J. Duda''Asymmetric numeral systems: entropy coding ...

(ANS), a family of entropy encoding methods introduced by Jarosław Duda from Jagiellonian University, since 2014 widely used in

data compression In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compressio ...

* Poland joins the European Southern Observatory 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 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, exper ...

, an implant, program: "Polish Artificial Heart" * Graphene acquisition, in 2011 the Institute of Electronic Materials Technology and Department of Physics,

Warsaw University The University of Warsaw ( pl, Uniwersytet Warszawski, la, Universitas Varsoviensis) is a public university in Warsaw, Poland. Established in 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country offering 37 different fields of ...

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 Maximal entropy random walk (MERW) is a popular type of biased random walk on a graph, in which transition probabilities are chosen accordingly to the principle of maximum entropy, which says that the probability distribution which best represents ...

(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 s ...

, used e.g. in complex network analysis, image analysis, tractography, physics, which was started by article from Jagiellonian University *

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 lase ...

, first blue laser in Poland (third in the world)

1951–2000

Krzysztof Matyjaszewski Krzysztof "Kris" Matyjaszewski (; born April 8, 1950) is a Polish-American chemist. He is the J.C. Warner Professor of the Natural Sciences at the Carnegie Mellon University Matyjaszewski is best known for the discovery of atom transfer radical ...

, Polish-American chemist, discoverer of

atom-transfer radical polymerization Atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) is an example of a reversible-deactivation radical polymerization. Like its counterpart, ATRA, or atom transfer radical addition, ATRP is a means of forming a carbon-carbon bond with a transition metal cat ...

Bohdan Paczyński Bohdan Paczyński or Bohdan Paczynski (8 February 1940 – 19 April 2007) was a Polish astronomer notable in the theory of the stellar evolution, accretion discs, and gamma ray bursts. Life Paczyński was born on 8 February 1940 in Vilnius, L ...

, Polish

, credited with the development of a new method of detecting space objects and establishing their mass using the

gravitational lens A gravitational lens is a distribution of matter (such as a cluster of galaxies) between a distant light source and an observer that is capable of bending the light from the source as the light travels toward the observer. This effect is known ...

es 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 and Brzozowski's algorithm * PSR 1257+12, 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

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 m ...

and for coining the term the island of stability *

Jack Tramiel Jack Tramiel ( ; born Idek Trzmiel; December 13, 1928 – April 8, 2012) was an American businessman and Holocaust survivor, best known for founding Commodore International. The Commodore PET, VIC-20 and Commodore 64 are some home comput ...

, Polish American businessman, best known for founding

Commodore International Commodore International (other names include Commodore International Limited) was an American home computer and electronics manufacturer founded by Jack Tramiel. Commodore International (CI), along with its subsidiary Commodore Business Mac ...

;

Commodore PET The Commodore PET is a line of personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. A single all-in-one case combines a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, Commodore BASIC in read-only memory, keyboard, monochrome monitor, ...

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 ...

and Commodore 64 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 The PZL W-3 ''Sokół'' (English: "Falcon") is a medium-size, twin-engine, multipurpose helicopter developed and manufactured by Polish helicopter company PZL-Świdnik, now owned by Leonardo. It was the first helicopter entirely designed and pr ...

, a helicopter, FAA certificate in (1989) *

Paul Baran Paul Baran (born Pesach Baran ; April 29, 1926 – March 26, 2011) was a 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 dom ...

, Polish-American engineer who was a pioneer in the development of

computer networks A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are m ...

; he was one of the two independent inventors of

packet switching In telecommunications, packet switching is a method of grouping data into '' packets'' that are transmitted over a digital network. Packets are made of a header and a payload. Data in the header is used by networking hardware to direct the p ...

, 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 telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent public companies, Motorol ...

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-Talkie A walkie-talkie, more formally known as a handheld transceiver (HT), is a hand-held, portable, two-way radio transceiver. Its development during the Second World War has been variously credited to Donald Hings, radio engineer Alfred J. Gross, ...

s and one of the authors of his company success in the fields of radio communication * Benoit Mandelbrot, mathematician of Polish descent; known for developing a theory of "roughness and

self-similarity __NOTOC__ In mathematics, a self-similar object is exactly or approximately similar to a part of itself (i.e., the whole has the same shape as one or more of the parts). Many objects in the real world, such as coastlines, are statistically se ...

" and significant contributions to

fractal geometry In mathematics, a fractal is a geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scales, as illu ...

and chaos theory;

Mandelbrot set The Mandelbrot set () is the set of complex numbers c for which the function f_c(z)=z^2+c does not diverge to infinity when iterated from z=0, i.e., for which the sequence f_c(0), f_c(f_c(0)), etc., remains bounded in absolute value. This ...

* Flaris LAR01, Polish five-seat single-engined

very light jet A very light jet (VLJ), entry-level jet or personal jet, previously known as a microjet, is a category of small business jets seating four to eight people. VLJs are considered the lightest business jets and are approved for single-pilot operati ...

, currently under development by Metal-Master of

Jelenia Góra Jelenia Góra (pron. ; Polish: ; german: Hirschberg im Riesengebirge; Exonym: ''Deer Mountain''; szl, Jelyniŏ Gōra) is a historic city in southwestern Poland, within the historical region of Lower Silesia. Jelenia Góra is situated in the Low ...

* Solaris Urbino 18 Hybrid, a low-floor articulated

hybrid bus A hybrid electric bus is a bus that combines a conventional internal combustion engine propulsion system with an electric propulsion system. These type of buses normally use a Diesel-electric powertrain and are also known as hybrid Diesel-elec ...

es from the Solaris Urbino series for city communication services manufactured by

Solaris Bus & Coach Solaris Bus & Coach is a Polish producer of public transport vehicles ( buses, trolleybuses and trams), with its headquarters in Bolechowo-Osiedle near Poznań. It is a subsidiary of Spanish CAF. Solaris owns four production sites: its main fac ...

in Bolechowo near

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) Odra was a line of computers manufactured in Wrocław, Poland. The name comes from the Odra river that flows through the city of Wrocław. Overview The production started in 1959–1960. Models 1001, 1002, 1003, 1013, 1103, 1204 were of original ...

, 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 ...

(1971) * FB MSBS, an assault rifle developed by

FB "Łucznik" Radom Fabryka Broni "Łucznik" – Radom ()—also known as ''Fabryka Broni Radom'' or ''Zakłady Metalowe "Łucznik"''—is a Polish defence industry enterprise from Radom that produces firearms. The enterprise is a part of Polska Grupa Zbrojeniow ...

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 Radom is a city in east-central Poland, located approximately south of the capital, Warsaw. It is situated on the Mleczna River in the Masovian Voivodeship (since 1999), having previously been the seat of a separate Radom Voivodeship (1975� ...

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, 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 air ...

* EP-09, 'B0B0' Polish electric locomotive class *

PT-91 The PT-91 Twardy (, en, Tough, link=no) is a Polish main battle tank. A development of the T-72M1, it entered service in 1995. The PT-91 was designed at the OBRUM (''Ośrodek Badawczo-Rozwojowy Urządzeń Mechanicznych'', or ''Research ...

, Polish main battle tank. Designed at the Research and Development Centre of Mechanical Systems OBRUM (''Ośrodek Badawczo-Rozwojowy Urządzeń Mechanicznych'') in

Gliwice Gliwice (; german: Gleiwitz) is a city in Upper Silesia, in southern Poland. The city is located in the Silesian Highlands, on the Kłodnica river (a tributary of the Oder). It lies approximately 25 km west from Katowice, the regional capi ...

Grom (missile) The Grom (meaning "thunder" in Polish) is a man-portable air-defense system produced in Poland and based on the Soviet man-portable infrared homing surface-to-air missile (SAM) 9K38 Igla. It consists of a 72 mm anti-aircraft missile set wi ...

, an anti-aircraft missile * 206FM, class minesweeper (NATO: "Krogulec") * Meteor (rocket), a series of sounding rockets (1963) *

PZL TS-11 Iskra The PZL TS-11 ''Iskra'' ( en, Spark) is a Polish jet trainer, developed and manufactured by aircraft company PZL-Mielec. It was used by the air forces of Poland and India. It is notable as being the first domestically developed jet aircraft to ...

, 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 The Mizar system consists 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 ...

, 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, Polish engineer and scientist, co-authored the general idea and contributed significantly to the design and construction of the Lunar Roving Vehicle used by missions Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17 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 o ...

, headquartered in Warsaw, was founded in 1952. *

Hilary Koprowski Hilary Koprowski (5 December 191611 April 2013) was a Polish virologist and immunologist active in the United States who demonstrated the world's first effective live polio vaccine. He authored or co-authored over 875 scientific papers and co ...

, 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, thei ...

and immunologist, inventor of the world's first effective live

polio vaccine Polio vaccines are vaccines used to prevent poliomyelitis (polio). Two types are used: an inactivated poliovirus given by injection (IPV) and a weakened poliovirus given by mouth (OPV). The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends all chi ...

Andrzej Udalski Andrzej Jarosław Udalski (born 22 January 1957 in Łódź, Poland) is a Polish people, Polish astronomer and astrophysicist, and director of the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Warsaw. He is also head of the Department of Observat ...

, 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, N ...

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, Polish physician; in 1972 Jabłońska proposed the association of the human papilloma viruses with

skin cancer Skin cancers are cancers that arise from the skin. They are due to the development of abnormal cells that have the ability to invade or spread to other parts of the body. There are three main types of skin cancers: basal-cell skin cancer (BCC) ...

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 papillo ...

; 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 ...

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,

Polish-American Polish Americans ( pl, Polonia amerykańska) are Americans who either have total or partial Polish ancestry, or are citizens of the Republic of Poland. There are an estimated 9.15 million self-identified Polish Americans, representing about 2.83% ...

endocrinologist 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 events ...

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 Tomasz is a Polish given name, the equivalent of Thomas in English. Notable people with the given name include: * Tomasz Adamek (born 1976), Polish heavyweight boxer *Tomasz Arciszewski (1877–1955), Polish socialist politician and Prime Mini ...

, 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, Polish physicist; he contributed largely to the field of

quantum informatics Quantum information science is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to understand the analysis, processing, and transmission of information using quantum mechanics principles. It combines the study of Information science with quantum effects in p ...

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, 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, co ...

, Polish

, 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 outcome ...

, 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 Mechanism design is a field in economics and game theory that takes an objectives-first approach to designing economic mechanisms or incentives, toward desired objectives, in strategic settings, where players act rationally. Because it starts a ...

, which show how desired outcomes are achieved in

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...

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 so ...

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 Artur Konrad Ekert FRS (born 19 September 1961) is a Polish professor of quantum physics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, professorial fellow in quantum physics and cryptography at Merton College, Oxford, Lee Kong Chian C ...

, Polish physicist; one of the inventors of

quantum cryptography Quantum cryptography is the science of exploiting quantum mechanical properties to perform cryptographic tasks. The best known example of quantum cryptography is quantum key distribution which offers an information-theoretically secure solution ...

* Jacek Pałkiewicz, Polish journalist, traveler and explorer; fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, discoverer of the sources of the Amazon River *

, Polish mathematician, a leading representatives of the

;

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 subdi ...

, Kuratowski-Zorn lemma;

Kuratowski closure axioms In topology and related branches of mathematics, the Kuratowski closure axioms are a set of axioms that can be used to define a topological structure on a set. They are equivalent to the more commonly used open set definition. They were first forma ...

Tadek Marek Tadeusz "Tadek" Marek (1908–1982) was a Polish automobile engineer, known for his Aston Martin engines. Marek was from Kraków and studied engineering at Technische Universität Berlin before working for Fiat in Poland and also for General Mo ...

, Polish automobile engineer, known for his Aston Martin engines * Otto Marcin Nikodym, Polish mathematician; Radon-Nikodym theorem *

Zygmunt Bauman Zygmunt Bauman (; 19 November 1925 – 9 January 2017) was a Polish sociologist and philosopher. He was driven out of the Polish People's Republic during the 1968 Polish political crisis and forced to give up his Polish citizenship. He emigrat ...

, 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 norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissancein the "Age of Reas ...

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; ...

, postmodern

consumerism Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. With the Industrial Revolution, but particularly in the 20th century, mass production led to overproduction—the su ...

as well as the concept of

liquid modernity A liquid is a nearly incompressible fluid that conforms to the shape of its container but retains a (nearly) constant volume independent of pressure. As such, it is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, gas, ...

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; 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 co ...

discovery by

Jerzy Pniewski Jerzy Pniewski (June 1, 1913 – June 16, 1989) was a Polish physicist. Pniewski was born in Płock.http://www.fuw.edu.pl/~ajduk/hyperakw.pdf He studied mathematics and physics at the University of Warsaw. In 1952, he co-discovered the hypernu ...

and Marian Danysz in 1952. * Anna Wierzbicka, 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, linguistics and comp ...

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 in ...

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 Wierzbi ...

and the concept of

semantic primes Semantic primes or semantic primitives are a set of semantic concepts that are argued to be innately understood by all people but impossible to express in simpler terms. They represent words or phrases that are learned through practice but cannot ...

Andrzej Grzegorczyk Andrzej Grzegorczyk (; 22 August 1922 – 20 March 2014) was a Polish logician, mathematician, philosopher, and ethicist noted for his work in computability, mathematical logic, and the foundations of mathematics. Historical family background ...

, 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 ...

* Stanisław Jaśkowski, Polish mathematician; he is regarded as one of the founders of

natural deduction In logic and proof theory, natural deduction is a kind of proof calculus in which logical reasoning is expressed by inference rules closely related to the "natural" way of reasoning. This contrasts with Hilbert-style systems, which instead use ax ...

, which he discovered independently of

Gerhard Gentzen Gerhard Karl Erich Gentzen (24 November 1909 – 4 August 1945) was a German mathematician and logician. He made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics, proof theory, especially on natural deduction and sequent calculus. He died ...

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 Intuitionistic logic, sometimes more generally called constructive logic, refers to systems of symbolic logic that differ from the systems used for classical logic by more closely mirroring the notion of constructive proof. In particular, systems ...

and free logic. *

Karol Borsuk Karol Borsuk (May 8, 1905 – January 24, 1982) was a Polish mathematician. His main interest was topology, while he obtained significant results also in functional analysis. Borsuk introduced the theory of '' absolute retracts'' (ARs) and ''abs ...

, Polish mathematician; his main area of interest was

topology In mathematics, topology (from the Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing ...

; 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 ...

, later called Borsuk–Spanier cohomotopy groups; he also founded shape theory; Borsuk's conjecture, Borsuk-Ulam theorem *

Jerzy Konorski Jerzy Konorski (1 December 1903 in Łódź, Congress Poland – 14 November 1973 in Warsaw, Polish People's Republic, Poland) was a Polish neurophysiologist who further developed the work of Ivan Pavlov by discovering secondary conditioned reflexes ...

, Polish neurophysiologist; he discovered secondary conditioned reflexes and operant conditioning and proposed the idea of gnostic neurons - a concept similar to the grandmother cell; he also coined the term

neural plasticity Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity, or brain plasticity, is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. It is when the brain is rewired to function in some way that differs from how it p ...

, and he developed theoretical ideas regarding it *

Antoni Kępiński Antoni Ignacy Tadeusz Kępiński (16 November 1918 – 8 June 1972) was a Polish psychiatrist and philosopher. He is known as the originator of concepts of information metabolism (IM) and axiological psychiatry. Biography Kępiński was born i ...

, Polish psychiatrist; he developed the psychological theory of

information metabolism Information metabolism, sometimes referred to as informational metabolism or energetic-informational metabolism, is a psychological theory of interaction between biological organisms and their environment, developed by Polish psychiatrist Antoni K� ...

which explores human

social interactions A social relation or also described as a social interaction or social experience is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more individuals ...

based on information processing which significantly influenced the development of

socionics Socionics, in psychology and sociology, is a pseudoscientific theory of information processing and personality types. It incorporates Carl Jung's work on '' Psychological Types'' with Antoni Kępiński's theory of information metabolism. Socio ...

Zbigniew Religa Zbigniew Eugeniusz Religa (; 16 December 1938 – 8 March 2009) was a prominent Polish cardiac surgeon and politician. Career as doctor Religa finished his studies at the Medical University of Warsaw in 1963. From 1966 to 1980 he worked in ...

, Polish

cardiac surgeon Cardiac surgery, or cardiovascular surgery, is surgery on the heart or great vessels performed by cardiac surgeons. It is often used to treat complications of ischemic heart disease (for example, with coronary artery bypass grafting); to corr ...

; 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 procedu ...

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, a renowned Polish transplantation surgeon 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 Cleveland Clinic is a nonprofit American academic medical center based in Cleveland, Ohio. Owned and operated by the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, an Ohio nonprofit corporation established in 1921, it runs a 170-acre (69 ha) campus in Cleveland, ...

in 2008 *

Tadeusz Krwawicz Tadeusz Krwawicz (15 January 1910 – 17 August 1988) was a Polish ophthalmologist. He pioneered the use of cryosurgery in ophthalmology.A . Skłodowska, J. Szaflik.Tadeusz Krwawicz - Distinguished Ophthalmologist and Polish Scientist (1910-19 ...

, Polish ophthalmologist; he pioneered the use of

cryosurgery Cryosurgery is the use of extreme cold in surgery to destroy abnormal or diseased tissue; thus, it is the surgical application of cryoablation. The term comes from the Greek words cryo (κρύο) ("icy cold") and surgery (''cheirourgiki'' – χ� ...

in ophthalmology; he was the first to describe a method of

cataract A cataract is a cloudy area in the lens of the eye that leads to a decrease in vision. Cataracts often develop slowly and can affect one or both eyes. Symptoms may include faded colors, blurry or double vision, halos around light, trouble ...

extraction by cryoadhesion in 1961, and to develop a probe by means of which cataracts can be grasped and extracted *

Albert Sabin Albert Bruce Sabin ( ; August 26, 1906 – March 3, 1993) was a Polish-American medical researcher, best known for developing the oral polio vaccine, which has played a key role in nearly eradicating the disease. In 1969–72, he served as th ...

, Polish-American medical researcher, best known for developing the oral

which has played a key role in nearly eradicating the disease *

Stefan Kudelski Stefan Kudelski (27 August 1931 – 26 January 2013)
Nagra was a Polish audio engineer known for creating ...

, 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 Zdzislaw I. Pawlak (10 November 1926 – 7 April 2006) was a Polish mathematician and computer scientist. He was affiliated with several organization, including the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Warsaw School of Information Technology. He ...

, Polish

and computer scientist; known for his contribution to many branches of

theoretical computer science 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 circumscribe the ...

; 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 Samuel Eilenberg (September 30, 1913 – January 30, 1998) was a Polish-American mathematician who co-founded category theory (with Saunders Mac Lane) and homological algebra. Early life and education He was born in Warsaw, Kingdom of Poland to ...

, Polish-American mathematician,

Eilenberg–MacLane space In mathematics, specifically algebraic topology, an Eilenberg–MacLane space Saunders Mac Lane originally spelt his name "MacLane" (without a space), and co-published the papers establishing the notion of Eilenberg–MacLane spaces under this name ...

Eilenberg–Mazur swindle In mathematics, the Eilenberg–Mazur swindle, named after Samuel Eilenberg and Barry Mazur, is a method of proof that involves paradoxical properties of infinite sums. In geometric topology it was introduced by and is often called the Mazur swi ...

Eilenberg–Maclane spectrum In mathematics, specifically algebraic topology, there is a distinguished class of spectra called Eilenberg–Maclane spectra HA for any Abelian group Apg 134. Note, this construction can be generalized to commutative rings R as well from its under ...

, Eilenberg–Steenrod axioms *

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,

ethnographer Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...

, statistician 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, he introduced the Czekanowski binary index *

Henryk Iwaniec Henryk Iwaniec (born October 9, 1947) is a Polish-American mathematician, and since 1987 a professor at Rutgers University. Background and education Iwaniec studied at the University of Warsaw, where he got his PhD in 1972 under Andrzej Schin ...

, mathematician, he is noted for his outstanding contributions to analytic number theory and

sieve theory Sieve theory is a set of general techniques in number theory, designed to count, or more realistically to estimate the size of, sifted sets of integers. The prototypical example of a sifted set is the set of prime numbers up to some prescribed lim ...

; Friedlander-Iwaniec theorem * Andrzej Piotr Ruszczyński, Polish-American

applied 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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

, noted for his contributions to mathematical optimization, in particular, stochastic programming and risk-averse optimization

1901–1950

* Polish mine detector, a metal detector used for detecting

land mines A land mine is an explosive device concealed under or on the ground and designed to destroy or disable enemy targets, ranging from combatants to vehicles and tanks, as they pass over or near it. Such a device is typically detonated automati ...

, developed during

(1941–42) by Polish Lieutenant Józef Stanisław Kozacki. It contributed substantially to British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's 1942 victory over German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel at El Alamein. * Cryptologic bomb was a special-purpose machine designed in 1938 by Polish

cryptologist This is a list of cryptographers. Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties called adversaries. Pre twentieth century * Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi: wrote a (now lost) bo ...

Marian Rejewski to speed the breaking of the Enigma machine ciphers 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 ...

. It was a forerunner of the "

Bombe The bombe () was an electro-mechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted secret messages during World War II. The US Navy and US Army later produced their own machines to the same functi ...

s" 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 followin ...

, 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

. *'' Biuro Szyfrów'' (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 that would be used by

through

, 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 Sir Joseph Rotblat (4 November 1908 – 31 August 2005) was a Polish and British physicist. During World War II he worked on Tube Alloys and the Manhattan Project, but left the Los Alamos Laboratory on grounds of conscience after it became ...

, 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 *

, 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 low ...

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 A cellular automaton (pl. cellular automata, abbrev. CA) is a discrete model of computation studied in automata theory. Cellular automata are also called cellular spaces, tessellation automata, homogeneous structures, cellular structures, tesse ...

, 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 Nuclear pulse propulsion or external pulsed plasma propulsion is a hypothetical method of spacecraft propulsion that uses nuclear explosions for thrust. It originated as Project ''Orion'' with support from DARPA, after a suggestion by Stanislaw ...

. * 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, 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 ...

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 ov ...

, 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 first device to allow the tank commander to have a 360-degree view from his turret, invented by engineer

Rudolf Gundlach Rudolf Gundlach (1892–1957) was a Polish military engineer, inventor and tank designer. He headed the design division of the Armored Weapons Technical Research Bureau (''Biuro Badań Technicznych Broni Pancernych''). He held the military rank ...

(1936) *

Polish notation Polish notation (PN), also known as normal Polish notation (NPN), Łukasiewicz notation, Warsaw notation, Polish prefix notation or simply prefix notation, is a mathematical notation in which operators ''precede'' their operands, in contrast ...

, 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 The method of Zygalski sheets was a cryptologic technique used by the Polish Cipher Bureau before and during World War II, and during the war also by British cryptologists at Bletchley Park, to decrypt messages enciphered on German Enigma mac ...

, also known as "perforated sheets" (invented in 1938 by

Henryk Zygalski Henryk Zygalski (; 15 July 1908 – 30 August 1978) was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who worked at breaking German Enigma ciphers before and during World War II. Life Zygalski was born on 15 July 1908 in Posen, German Empire (now Pozn ...

), were one of a number of devices created by the Polish Cipher Bureau to facilitate the breaking of German Enigma ciphers. *

, Polish mathematician, Banach space, Banach-Tarski paradox,

Banach algebra In mathematics, especially functional analysis, a Banach algebra, named after Stefan Banach, is an associative algebra A over the real or complex numbers (or over a non-Archimedean complete normed field) that at the same time is also a Banach ...

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, norm, topology, etc.) and the linear functions defined o ...

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 certa ...

, uniform boundedness principle,

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 ...

, Banach measure *

was a group of eminent Polish mathematicians that included

Mark Kac Mark Kac ( ; Polish: ''Marek Kac''; August 3, 1914 – October 26, 1984) was a Polish American mathematician. His main interest was probability theory. His question, " Can one hear the shape of a drum?" set off research into spectral theory, the ...

and many more. * Tadeusz Banachiewicz, Polish astronomer, inventor of the chronocinematograph *

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 engi ...

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 opposi ...

(1935) * FB Vis, a 9×19mm caliber, single-action, semi-automatic pistol * PZL.23 Karaś, 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 torpedoes, or deploying air-launched cruise missiles. The first use of bombs dropped from an air ...

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, 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, twin-engine medium

designed in the

Jerzy Dąbrowski Jerzy Dąbrowski (September 8, 1899 – September 17, 1967) was a Polish aeronautical engineer. He was the lead designer of the famed PZL.37 Łoś medium bomber. Dąbrowski was born in Nieborów, west of Warsaw to a railway clerk family. He stud ...

(mid-1930s) *

LWS-6 Żubr The LWS-6 Żubr (PZL.30, ''wisent'') was a twin-engined medium bomber designed and produced by the Polish aircraft manufacturer LWS. It was only produced in limited numbers and was used for training purposes as it proved to be inferior to the con ...

, initially a passenger plane. Since the Polish airline LOT bought Douglas DC-2 planes instead, the project was converted to a bomber aircraft (early-1930s) * SS Sołdek, the first ship built in Poland after

(1948) *

Alfred Korzybski Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski (, ; July 3, 1879 – March 1, 1950) was a Polish-American independent scholar who developed a field called general semantics, which he viewed as both distinct from, and more encompassing than, the field of s ...

, Polish philosopher and mathematician who developed the field of

general semantics General semantics is concerned with how events translate to perceptions, how they are further modified by the names and labels we apply to them, and how we might gain a measure of control over our own cognitive, emotional, and behavioral respons ...

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, "one of precursors in the development of

holography Holography is a technique that enables a wavefront to be recorded and later re-constructed. Holography is best known as a method of generating real three-dimensional images, but it also has a wide range of other applications. In principle, i ...

" (a quote from

Dennis Gabor Dennis Gabor ( ; hu, Gábor Dénes, ; 5 June 1900 – 9 February 1979) was a Hungarian-British electrical engineer and physicist, most notable for inventing holography, for which he later received the 1971 Nobel Prize in Physics. He obtained ...

) *

, Polish mathematician; one of the founders of the

, he is regarded as one of the early founders of game theory 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 ...

which led to later development of more comprehensive approaches by other scholars; Banach-Steinhaus theorem * LWS, an abbreviation name used by Polish aircraft manufacturer ''Lubelska Wytwórnia Samolotów'' (1936–1939) *

, 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 ...

, a tankette (1931) * Stetysz (1929), Polish automobile manufacture by engineer and inventor, Stefan Tyszkiewicz *

RWD-1 The RWD 1 was a Polish sports plane of 1928 in aviation, 1928, a single-engine high-wing monoplane constructed by the RWD (aircraft manufacturer), RWD design team. Development The RWD 1 was the first aircraft constructed by the RWD (aircraft manu ...

, 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 An anti-tank rifle is an anti-materiel rifle designed to penetrate the armor of armored fighting vehicles, most commonly tanks, armored personnel carriers, and infantry fighting vehicles. The term is usually used for weapons that can be carri ...

used by the

Polish Army The Land Forces () are the land forces of the Polish Armed Forces. They currently contain some 62,000 active personnel and form many components of the European Union and NATO deployments around the world. Poland's recorded military history stre ...

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, 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 ...

Smoluchowski coagulation equation In statistical physics, the Smoluchowski coagulation equation is a population balance equation introduced by Marian Smoluchowski in a seminal 1916 publication, describing the time evolution of the number density of particles as they coagulate (in ...

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 protac ...

, Polish physical chemist, the discoverer of chemical element

protactinium Protactinium (formerly protoactinium) is a chemical element with the symbol Pa and atomic number 91. It is a dense, silvery-gray actinide metal which readily reacts with oxygen, water vapor and inorganic acids. It forms various chemical compounds ...

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 "vit ...

, Polish biochemist, credited with formulating the concept of vitamines *

, 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 A semantic theory of truth is a theory of truth in the philosophy of language which holds that truth is a property of sentences. Origin The semantic conception of truth, which is related in different ways to both the correspondence and deflati ...

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 *

, 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 collection ...

and the

continuum hypothesis In mathematics, the continuum hypothesis (abbreviated CH) is a hypothesis about the possible sizes of infinite sets. It states that or equivalently, that In Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice (ZFC), this is equivalent to ...

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 integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) said, "Mat ...

, theory of functions and

;

Sierpiński triangle The Sierpiński triangle (sometimes spelled ''Sierpinski''), also called the Sierpiński gasket or Sierpiński sieve, is a fractal attractive fixed set with the overall shape of an equilateral triangle, subdivided recursively into smaller equi ...

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 ...

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 Sierpiń ...

, Sierpiński number * Aleksander Jabłoński, Polish physicist, known for Jablonski diagram * Franciszek Mertens, mathematician,

Mertens function In number theory, the Mertens function is defined for all positive integers ''n'' as : M(n) = \sum_^n \mu(k), where \mu(k) is the Möbius function. The function is named in honour of Franz Mertens. This definition can be extended to positive re ...

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 188 ...

Mertens's theorems In number theory, Mertens' theorems are three 1874 results related to the density of prime numbers proved by Franz Mertens.F. Mertens. J. reine angew. Math. 78 (1874), 46–6Ein Beitrag zur analytischen Zahlentheorie/ref> "Mertens' theorem" may al ...

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 A ...

, designer of first windscreen wipers *

Rudolf Weigl Rudolf Stefan Jan Weigl (2 September 1883 – 11 August 1957) was a Polish biologist, physician and inventor, known for creating the first effective vaccine A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a ...

, 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 Ludwik Hirszfeld (5 August 1884 – 7 March 1954) was a Polish microbiologist and serologist. He is considered a co-discoverer of the inheritance of ABO blood types. Life He was a cousin of Aleksander Rajchman, a Polish mathematician, and of ...

, Polish microbiologist and serologist. He is considered a co-discoverer of the inheritance of ABO blood types * Stephanie Kwolek, American chemist of Polish origin, inventor of

Kevlar Kevlar (para-aramid) is a strong, heat-resistant synthetic fiber, related to other aramids such as Nomex and Technora. Developed by Stephanie Kwolek at DuPont in 1965, the high-strength material was first used commercially in the early 1970s a ...

* Andrzej Tarkowski, Polish embryologist and Professor of

, 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) f ...

cloning Cloning is the process of producing individual organisms with identical or virtually identical DNA, either by natural or artificial means. In nature, some organisms produce clones through asexual reproduction. In the field of biotechnology, c ...

and stem cell discovery *

Michał Kalecki Michał Kalecki (; 22 June 1899 – 18 April 1970) was a Polish Marxian economist. Over the course of his life, Kalecki worked at the London School of Economics, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford and Warsaw School of Economics ...

, Polish

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the 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 field there are ...

; 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 Business cycles are intervals of expansion followed by recession in economic activity. These changes have implications for the welfare of the broad population as well as for private institutions. Typically business cycles are measured by examin ...

, growth, full employment,

income distribution In economics, income distribution covers how a country's total GDP is distributed amongst its population. Economic theory and economic policy have long seen income and its distribution as a central concern. Unequal distribution of income causes ec ...

, 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 environm ...

; he offered a synthesis that integrated Marxist class analysis and the then-new literature on oligopoly theory, 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 ...

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, ...

and statistical data to economic questions. * Stefan Bryła, Polish construction engineer and

welding Welding is a 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 is distinct from lower temperature techniques such as bra ...

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

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 conn ...

known for Zarankiewicz problem and

Zarankiewicz crossing number conjecture 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. ...

Ralph Modjeski Ralph Modjeski (born Rudolf Modrzejewski; January 27, 1861 – June 26, 1940) was a Polish-American civil engineer who achieved prominence as "America's greatest bridge builder." Life He was born in Bochnia, called Galicia at the time, on Janu ...

, Polish civil engineer who achieved prominence as a pre-eminent bridge designer in the United States *

Wojciech Świętosławski Wojciech Alojzy Świętosławski (1881 – 1968) was a Polish physical chemist, who is considered the "father of modern thermochemistry". He developed a static method of cryometric measurement and a new method of testing coal. Świętosławski was ...

, Polish chemist and physicist, considered the father of

thermochemistry Thermochemistry is the study of the heat energy which is associated with chemical reactions and/or phase changes such as melting and boiling. A reaction may release or absorb energy, and a phase change may do the same. Thermochemistry focuses on ...

* 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 limit ...

and a pioneer of

sound-on-film Sound-on-film is a class of sound film processes where the sound accompanying a picture is recorded on photographic film, usually, but not always, the same strip of film carrying the picture. Sound-on-film processes can either record an analog ...

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 ...

and metallurgy *

Mieczysław Mąkosza Mieczysław Józef Mąkosza (born 16 November 1934) is a Polish chemist specializing in organic synthesis and investigation of organic mechanisms. Along with Jerzy Winiarski he is credited for the discovery of the aromatic vicarious nucleophilic ...

, Polish chemist 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 reactions *Bronisław Malinowski, Polish anthropologist, often considered one of the most important 20th-century anthropologists; participatory observation *Mirosław Hermaszewski, Polish Air Force officer and cosmonaut; the first Polish person in space *Henryk Arctowski, Polish scientist, explorer and an internationally renowned meteorologist; a pioneer in the exploration of Antarctica *Józef Paczoski, Polish botanist; he coined the term of phytosociology and was one of the founders of this branch of botany *Stefan Drzewiecki, Polish scientist, journalist, engineer, constructor and inventor; he developed several models of propeller-driven submarines 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; 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 propellers. *Tadeusz Tański, Polish automobile engineer and the designer of, among others, the first Polish serially-built automobile, the CWS T-1 *Leonard Danilewicz, 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; he is the co-author of ''The Polish Peasant in Europe and America'', which is considered the foundation of modern empirical sociology *Adolf Beck (physiologist), Adolf Beck, Polish physiologist, a pioneer of electroencephalography (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, Polish mathematician, studying mainly

; Schinzel's hypothesis H, Davenport–Schinzel sequence *Ladislas Starevich, Władysław Starewicz, Polish-Russian pioneering film director and stop-motion animator, 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 in Poland; he described bacteria living in the human stomach and speculated that they were responsible for stomach ulcers, gastric cancer and achylia. 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 and Barry Marshall, who received the

in 2005 *Witold Hurewicz, Polish mathematician; Hurewicz space, Hurewicz theorem *Józef Wierusz-Kowalski, Polish physicist, discoverer of the phenomenon of progressive phosphorescence

1851–1900

Marie Skłodowska-Curie's Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1911

, Polish chemist and physicist, a pioneer in the field of radioactivity, co-discoverer of the chemical elements radium and polonium *Zygmunt Florenty Wróblewski and Karol Olszewski, 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 (1882) *Ignacy Łukasiewicz, Polish pharmacist and petroleum industry pioneer who in 1856 built the world's first oil refinery; his achievements included the discovery of how to distill kerosene from seep oil, the invention of the modern kerosene lamp, the introduction of the first modern street lamp in Europe, and the construction one of the world's first modern oil well *The Polish Academy of Learning, an academy of sciences, was founded in

in 1872. *Stefan Drzewiecki built in 1884 the world's first electric submarine. *Casimir Zeglen, inventor of one of the first bulletproof vests *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 and Tristimulus colorimeter, colorimeter *Edmund Biernacki, Polish pathologist, known for the erythrocyte sedimentation rate, Biernacki reaction used worldwide to assess erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), which is one of the major blood tests *Ludwik Gumplowicz, Polish sociologist, "one of the founders of European sociology" *Antoni Leśniowski, Polish surgeon, discoverer of Crohn's disease, Leśniowski-Crohn's disease *Edward Flatau, Polish neurologist and psychiatrist, his name in medicine is linked to Redlich-Flatau syndrome, Flatau-Sterling torsion dystonia, 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, Polish inventor active in the field of cinema; he patented his first film camera, called Pleograph, before the Lumière brothers, and later went on to improve the cinema projector for the Gaumont Film Company, Gaumont company, as well as invent the widely used hand-held Aeroscope camera *Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky, Polish-Russian engineer and electrician; inventor of the three-phase electric power 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, he formulated the theory of the phoneme and allophone, phonetic alternations *Ernest Malinowski, Polish

, he constructed at that time the world's highest railway Ferrocarril Central Andino in the Peruvian Andes in 1871–1876 *Bruno Abakanowicz, Polish mathematician and electrical engineer, inventor of the integraph, spirograph and parabolagraph *Stanisław Kierbedź, Polish-Russian

, and military officer; he constructed the first permanent iron bridge over the Vistula River in

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, Polish naturalist, botanist, entomologist and philosopher; his ground-breaking studies and scientific publications laid down the foundations of malacology *L.L. Zamenhof, Ludwik Zamenhof, Polish medical doctor, inventor and writer; creator of Esperanto, the most successful constructed language in the world *Napoleon Cybulski, Polish physiologist and a pioneer of endocrinology and electroencephalography; discoverer of adrenaline *Wacław Mayzel, Polish histologist; he described for the first time the process of mitosis *Antoni Patek, 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 (surgery), resection; in 1884 he introduced a new method of surgical peptic ulcer treatment using Gastroenterostomy; Rydygier proposed (1900) original concepts for removing prostatic adenoma and introduced many other surgical techniques that are successfully used to date *Johann Dzierzon, Jan Dzierżoń, a pioneering Polish apiarist who discovered the phenomenon of parthenogenesis 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" *Stanisław Leśniewski, philosopher and logician, known for coining the term mereology

1801–1850

* Ignacy Domeyko - 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 and named it Mount Kosciuszko; he made a geological and mineralogical survey of the Gippsland region in present-day eastern Victoria (Australia), Victoria and from 1840 to 1842 he explored nearly every part of Tasmania; author of ''Physical Description of New South Wales'' (1845) *Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz - scholar, poet, and statesman *Ignacy Prądzyński, Polish military commander and general; principal engineer and designer of the Augustów Canal *Wojciech Jastrzębowski, 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 (government department), Ministry of Education. *Stanisław Staszic was an outstanding Polish philosopher, statesman, Catholic priest, geologist, translator, poet and writer — almost a one-man academy of sciences. The

' Staszic Palace, in

, is named after him; one of the founding fathers of the Constitution of May 3, 1791 - the world's second and Europe's first written constitution and a crowning achievement of the Enlightenment in Poland, Polish Enlightenment *Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński, Polish Messianist philosopher,

, physicist, inventor, lawyer, and

; 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

' letters and documents, which he had borrowed 40 years earlier with the intent of writing a biography of Copernicus, was lost. *Kazimierz Siemienowicz, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Polish–Lithuanian general of artillery, gunsmith, military engineer, and pioneer of

ry *Michał Boym, Polish Jesuit 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, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Polish–Lithuanian nobleman, military officer, engineer, and ethnographer. Arciszewski also served as a general of artillery for the Netherlands and Poland *Jan Jonston, Polish scholar and physician of Scottish descent; author of ''Thautomatographia naturalis'' (1632) and ''Idea universae medicinae practicae'' (1642) *Sendivogius, Michał Sędziwój, Polish alchemist, philosopher, and medical doctor; a pioneer of chemistry, 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 170 years before similar discoveries by Karl Wilhelm Scheele, Scheele and Joseph Priestley, Priestley; he correctly identified this 'food of life' with the gas (also oxygen) given off by heating nitre (saltpetre); this substance, the 'central nitre', had a central position in Sendivogius' schema of the universe.

1551–1600

*Bartholomäus Keckermann, ''A Short Commentary on Navigation'' (the first one written in Poland) *Josephus Struthius, 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, Polish philosopher and physician who lectured and published notable works in the field of medicine

1501–1550

*''De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium'' (On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres). Nicolaus Copernicus began writing ''De Revolutionibus'' in 1506, and finished in 1530. *

was a Renaissance

— an astronomer, mathematician, physician, lawyer, clergyman, governor, diplomat, military leader, classics scholar and economist, who developed the heliocentric, heliocentric theory in a form detailed enough to make it scientifically useful, and described "Gresham's Law" the year (1519) that Thomas Gresham was born *Marcin of Urzędów, Polish Roman Catholic priest, physician, pharmacist and botanist known especially for his ''Herbarz polski'' ("Polish Herbal") *Adam of Łowicz, Polish physician, philosopher, and humanist; author of *Albert Brudzewski, Polish astronomer, mathematician, philosopher and diplomat; known for establishing the Moon's elliptical orbit; author of

1351–1400

*Cracow Academy, Kraków Academy (''Akademia Krakowska'') founded in 1364 by King Kazimierz the Great.

1251–1300

*Witelo (ca. 1230 – ca. 1314), was a philosopher and a scientist who specialized in optics. His famous optical treatise, ''Perspectiva'', which drew on the Arabic ''Book of Optics'' by Ibn al-Haytham, Alhazen, was unique in Latin literature and helped give rise to Roger Bacon's best work. In addition to optics, Witelo's treatise made important contributions to the psychology of visual perception.

References

External links

Science in Poland, 2001-05

8 Ways We've Made Your Life Better
{{Inventions Polish history timelines Technology timelines, Polish Science timelines, Polish Science and technology in Poland, * Lists of inventions or discoveries, Polish Polish inventions,

Timeline

From 2001

1951–2000

1901–1950

1851–1900

1801–1850

1751–1800

1601–1650

1551–1600

1501–1550

1351–1400

1251–1300

See also

References

External links