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 dating from 1110 shows that Polish scholars already then had access to western European literature. In 1364, King Casimir III the Great founded the Cracow Academy, which would become one of the great universities of Europe.[1] The Polish people have made considerable contributions in the fields of science, technology and mathematics.[2] The list of famous scientists in Poland begins in earnest with the polymath, astronomer and mathematicianNicolaus Copernicus, who formulated the heliocentric theory and sparked the European Scientific Revolution.[3]
After the third partition of Poland, in 1795, no Polish state existed.[5] The 19th and 20th centuries saw many Polish scientists working abroad. One of them was Maria Skłodowska-Curie, a physicist and chemist living in France. Another noteworthy one was Ignacy Domeyko, a geologist and mineralogist who worked in Chile.[6]
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, Kraków, Lublin, Łódź, Poznań, Rzeszów, Toruń, Warsaw and Wrocław.[10] 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.
Lidia Morawska, Polish-Australian physicist whose work focuses on fundamental and applied research in the interdisciplinary field of air quality and its impact on human health, with a specific focus on atmospheric fine, ultrafine and nanoparticles. In 2020, she contributed to the area of airborne infection transmission of viruses, including COVID-19.[14]
Polish Artificial Heart Program launched by the Foundation for Cardiac Surgery Development in Zabrze.[21]
Graphene acquisition, in 2011 the Institute of Electronic Materials Technology and Department of Physics, Warsaw University announced a joint development of acquisition technology of large pieces of graphene with the best quality so far.[22] 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.[23]
Aleksander Wolszczan, Polish astronomer who, in 1992, co-discovered the first ever extrasolar planet – PSR 1257+12, a pulsar located 2,630 light years from Earth. It is believed to be orbited by at least four planets.[37]
Foundation For Polish Science – a non-governmental organisation aiming at supporting academics with high potential – since (1991)[42]
Stanisław Kamiński, Polish aeronautical engineer, designer of PZL W-3 Sokół, a helicopter, FAA certificate in (1989)[43]
Paul Baran, Polish-American engineer who was a pioneer in the development of computer networks; he was one of the two independent inventors of packet switching, which is today the dominant basis for data communications in computer networks worldwide.[44]
Henryk Magnuski, Polish telecommunications engineer who worked for Motorola in Chicago. He was the inventor of the first Walkie-Talkies and one of the authors of his company success in the fields of radio communication.[45]
PT-91, Polish main battle tank. Designed at the Research and Development Centre of Mechanical Systems OBRUM (Ośrodek Badawczo-Rozwojowy Urządzeń Mechanicznych) in Gliwice
Andrzej Trybulec, Polish mathematician who designed the Mizar system in 1973. The 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 the proof of new theorems; it was designed by [52]
Andrzej Udalski, initiator of the OGLE 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.[56]
Tomasz Dietl, Polish physicist; known for developing the theory, confirmed in recent years, of diluted ferromagnetic semiconductors, and for demonstrating new methods in controlling magnetization.[61]
Ball and stick model of a single layer of the Kevlar crystal structure.
Stephanie Kwolek, American chemist of Polish origin, who in 1965 created the first of a family of synthetic fibers of exceptional strength and stiffness. The best-known member is Kevlar, a material used in protective vests as well as in boats, airplanes, ropes, cables, and much more—in total about 200 applications.[63]
Andrzej Szczeklik, Polish immunologist; credited with discovering the anti-thrombotic properties of aspirin, and studies on the pathogenesis and treatment of aspirin-induced bronchial asthma.[64]
A diagram by the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research showing the measured (boxed) and predicted half-lives of superheavy nuclides, ordered by number of protons and neutrons. The expected location of the island of stability around Z = 112 is circled.
Zbigniew Religa, Polish cardiac surgeon; a pioneer in human heart transplantation; in 1987 he performed the first successful heart transplant in Poland;[83] 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 at the Cleveland Clinic in 2008.[84]
Tadeusz Krwawicz, Polish ophthalmologist; he pioneered the use of cryosurgery in ophthalmology;[85] he was the first to describe a method of cataract extraction by cryoadhesion in 1961,[86] and to develop a probe by means of which cataracts can be grasped and extracted.
Diagram showing the Lagrangian points of the Earth–Moon system. Kordylewski clouds exist in the regions of L4 and L5.
Marian Rejewski, Polish mathematician who was among the team of Polish cryptologists who broke the Enigma machine in the 1930s. In 1938, he designed the Cryptologic bomb, a special-purpose machine to speed the breaking of the Enigma machine ciphers that would be used by Nazi Germany in World War II. It was a forerunner of the "Bombes" that would be used by the British at Bletchley Park, and which would be a major element in the Allied Ultra program that may have decided the outcome of World War II.[111][112]
Jan Czochralski, Polish chemist credited with inventing the Czochralski method, 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). The method is still used in over 90 percent of all electronics in the world that use semiconductors.[113]
Wacław Struszyński, a Polish electronics engineer who made a vital contribution to the defeat of U-boats 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 convoy escort ships. Such direction finding systems were referred to as HF/DF or Huff-Duff, and enabled the bearings of U-boats to be determined when the U-boats made high frequency radio transmissions.[117]
Jan Łukasiewicz, Polish mathematician and logician who invented the Polish notation, also known as prefix notation, is a method of mathematical expression (1920).[120]
Zygmunt Pulawski, Polish aircraft designer. He designed in the early 1930s PZL P.11, Polish fighter aircraft. It was briefly the most advanced fighter aircraft of its kind in the world.
Zbysław Ciołkosz, Polish aircraft designer who designed LWS-6 Żubr, 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).
Michał Kalecki, Polish economist; he has been called "one of the most distinguished economists of the 20th century",[146] he made major theoretical and practical contributions in the areas of the business cycle, growth, full employment, income distribution, the political boom cycle, the oligopolistic economy, and risk; 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 schools of economic thought; he was also one of the first macroeconomists to apply mathematical models and statistical data to economic questions.
Bronisław Malinowski, Polish anthropologist, often considered one of the most important 20th-century anthropologists. His writings on ethnography, social theory, and field research have exerted a profound influence on the discipline of anthropology.[152]
Stefan Drzewiecki, Polish engineer and inventor who constructed the world's first electric submarine in 1884.[156] He developed several models of propeller-driven submarines that evolved from single-person vessels to a four-man model; he developed the blade element theory (1885), 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
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.[159]
Władysław Starewicz, Polish-Russian pioneering film director and stop-motionanimator, he is notable as the author of the first puppet-animated film i.e. The Beautiful Lukanida (1912).[160]
Henryk Derczyński, Polish photographer. He developed the isohelia technology, a technique that sharpens contrasts and defines three-dimensional images.[163]
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Russian and Soviet rocket scientist of Polish descent. He pioneered astronautics and is considered one of the pioneers of space flight and the founding father of modern rocketry and astronautics.[164][165]
Jerzy Rudlicki, Polish aerospace engineer and pilot. He is best known for his inventing and patenting of the V-tail in 1930, which is an aircraft tail configuration that combines the rudder and elevators into one system.[168]
Frank Piasecki, American engineer of Polish descent known as a helicopter aviation pioneer. He pioneered tandem rotor helicopter designs and created the compound helicopter concept of vectored thrust using a ducted propeller.[171]
Zygmunt 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).[176]
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 colorimeter.[183]
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 company, as well as invent the widely used hand-held Aeroscope camera.[187]
Stanisław Kierbedź, Polish-Russian engineer, and military officer; he constructed the first permanent iron bridge over the Vistula River in Warsaw 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.
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,[201] he was also the first to document this procedure; in 1881, as the first in the world, he carried out a peptic ulcerresection; 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.[202]
Jan Dzierżoń, a pioneering Polish apiarist who discovered the phenomenon of parthenogenesis in bees[203] and designed the first successful movable-frame beehive (1838);[204] his discoveries and innovations made him world-famous in scientific and bee-keeping circles; he has been described as "the father of apiculture".
Karol Adamiecki, Polish engineer and management theorist. He invented a novel means of displaying interdependent processes so as to enhance the visibility of production schedules (1896). With minor modifications, Adamiecki's chart is now more commonly referred to in English as the Gantt chart.[213]
Justyn Karliński[pl], physician and epidemiologist, who discovered over 20 bacteria in Bosnian waters. The discovery enabled the development of vaccines for numerous infectious diseases of humans and animals.[216]
Adam Bruno Wikszemski[pl], inventor of a device for phonographic recording of sound vibrations (1889)[217]
Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński, Polish philosopher, mathematician, physicist, inventor, lawyer, occultist and economist. In mathematics, he is known for introducing a novel series expansion for a function in response to Joseph Louis Lagrange's use of infinite series. The coefficients in Wroński's new series form the Wronskian. He is also known for designing continuous track.[219]
Felix Wierzbicki, physician and geographer, author of California as It Is and as It May Be, or A Guide to the Gold Region, the first English-language geographic overview and guide to California (1849)[220]
Ignacy Domeyko – geologist and mineralogist, a geological map of Chile, describing the Jurassic rock formations, and discovered deposits of a rare mineral (1846).[221]
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 and from 1840 to 1842 he explored nearly every part of Tasmania; author of Physical Description of New South Wales (1845).[222][223][224]
Wojciech Jastrzębowski, Polish scientist, naturalist and inventor, professor of botany, physics, zoology and horticulture; considered as one of the fathers of ergonomics
Engraving of Hevelius' 46 m (150 ft) focal-length telescope.
Adam Adamandy Kochański, Polish mathematician, physicist and clockmaker found an approximation of π today called the Kochański's Approximation (1685).[230] He also suggested replacing the clock's pendulum with a spring (1659), constructed a clock with a magnetic pendulum (1667), and was the author of the world's first systematic paper on the construction of clocks.
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".[231]
Jan Brożek (Ioannes Broscius) was the most prominent 17th-century Polish mathematician. Following his death, his collection of Nicolaus Copernicus' letters and documents, which he had borrowed 40 years earlier with the intent of writing a biography of Copernicus, was lost.
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. He was the first in Europe to describe Korea as a peninsula, as until then it was believed to be an island, and the first in Europe to establish the factual location of a number of Chinese cities and the Great Wall of China.[233]
Adam Freytag, mathematician and military engineer, wrote Architectura militaris nova et aucta, the first manual of bastion fortifications of the so-called Old Dutch system (1631).
Jan Jonston, Polish scholar and physician of Scottish descent; author of Thautomatographia naturalis (1632) and Idea universae medicinae practicae (1642)
Michał Sędziwój, who discovered that air is not a single substance and contains a life-giving substance (later called oxygen), on a painting by Jan Matejko.
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 Scheele and 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.[234]
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
Adam of Łowicz, Polish physician, philosopher, and humanist; author of Fundamentum scienciae nobilissimae secretorum naturae.[238]
Albert Brudzewski, Polish astronomer, mathematician, philosopher and diplomat. He was the author of Commentum planetarium in theoricas Georgii Purbachii and was the first to state that the Moon moves in an ellipse and always shows its same side to the Earth.[239]
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 Alhazen, was unique in Latin literature and helped give rise to Roger Bacon's best work. In 1284, he described the reflection and refraction of light.[241] In addition to optics, Witelo's treatise made important contributions to the psychology of visual perception.
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