2. StefanStefan
Mazurkiewicz :Mazurkiewicz :
Stefan Mazurkiewicz (25 September 1888 in Warsaw, then
Russian Empire – 19 June 1945, Grodzisk Mazowiecki, Poland)
was a Polish mathematician who worked in mathematical analysis,
topology, and probability. He was a student of Wacław Sierpiński
and a member of the Polish Academy of Learning (PAU). His
students included Karol Borsuk, Bronisław Knaster, Kazimierz
Kuratowski, Stanisław Saks, and Antoni Zygmund. For a time
Mazurkiewicz was a professor at the University of Paris;
however, he spent most of his career as a professor at the
University of Warsaw.
Polish Cipher Bureau
Biuro Szyfrów Methods and technology
" Polish victory at the critical Battle of Warsaw and possibly
to Poland's survival as an independent country.
3. Karol BorsukKarol Borsuk
Karol Borsuk (May 8, 1905 – January 24, 1982) was a Polish mathematician.
His main interest was topology.
Borsuk introduced the theory of absolute retracts (ARs) and absolute neighborhood
retracts (ANRs), and the cohomotopy groups, later called Borsuk–Spanier cohomotopy
groups. He also founded Shape theory. He has constructed various beautiful examples
of topological spaces, e.g. an acyclic, 3-dimensional continuum which admits a fixed
point free homeomorphism onto itself; also 2-dimensional, contractible polyhedra which
have no free edge. His topological and geometric conjectures and themes stimulated
research for more than half a century.
Borsuk received his master's degree and doctorate from Warsaw University in 1927 and
1930, respectively; his Ph.D. thesis advisor was Stefan Mazurkiewicz. He was a
member of the Polish Academy of Sciences from 1952. Borsuk's students included
Samuel Eilenberg, Jan Jaworowski, Krystyna Kuperberg, Włodzimierz Kuperberg, and
Andrzej Trybulec.
4. Zygmunt JaniszewskiZygmunt Janiszewski
Zygmunt Janiszewski (June 12, 1888 – January 3, 1920) was a Polish
mathematician.
His mother was Julia Szulc-Chojnicka. His father, Czeslaw Janiszewski, was a graduate of
the University of Warsaw and was an important person in finance, being the director of the
Société du Crédit Municipal in Warsaw.
Janiszewski taught at the University of Lwów and was professor at the University of
Warsaw. At the outbreak of World War I he was a soldier in the Polish Legions of Józef
Piłsudski, fighting for Polish independence. With Piłsudski himself and other officers, he
refused to swear an oath of allegiance to the Austrian government. He left the Legions and
hid under the false name Zygmunt Wicherkiewicz in Boiska, near Zwoleń. From Boiska he
moved on to Ewin, near Włoszczowa, where he directed a shelter for homeless children.
At the end of World War I, Janiszewski was the driving force behind the creation of one of
the strongest schools of mathematics in the world. This is all the more remarkable, given
Poland's difficult situaltion at war's end.
Janiszewski devoted the family property that he had inherited from his father to charity
5. He was the driving force, together with Wacław Sierpiński and Stefan Mazurkiewicz, behind
the founding of the mathematics journal Fundamenta Mathematicae. Janiszewski proposed
the name of the journal in 1919, though the first issue was published in 1920, after his
death. It was his intent that the first issue comprise solely contributions by Polish
mathematicians. It was Janiszewski's vision that Poland become a world leader in the field of
mathematics—which she did in the interbellum.
His life was cut short by the influenza pandemic of 1918-19, which took his life at Lwów on 3
January 1920 at the age of 31. He willed his body for medical research, and his cranium for
craniological study, desiring to be "useful after his death".
6. StanisławStanisław
MazurMazur
Stanisław Mazur (1 January 1905, Lemberg – 5 November 1981, Warsaw) was a Polish
mathematician and a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Mazur made important contributions to geometrical methods in linear and nonlinear
functional analysis and to the study of Banach algebras. He was also interested in
summability theory, infinite games and computable functions.
Mazur was a student of Stefan Banach at University of Lwów. His doctorate, under
Banach's supervision, was awarded in 1935.
Mazur was a close collaborator with Banach at Lwów and was a member of the Lwów School
of Mathematics, where he participated in the mathematical activities at the Scottish Café.
On 6 November 1936, he posed the "basis problem" of determining whether every Banach
space has a Schauder basis, with Mazur promising a "live goose" as a reward: Thirty-seven
years later, a live goose was awarded by Mazur to Per Enflo in a ceremony that was
broadcast throughout Poland.
From 1948 Mazur worked at the University of Warsaw.
7. Władysław OrliczWładysław Orlicz
Władysław Roman Orlicz (May 24, 1903 in
Okocim, Austria-Hungary (now Poland) – August
9, 1990 in Poznań, Poland) was a Polish
mathematician of Lwów School of Mathematics.
His main interests were functional analysis and
topology: Orlicz spaces are named after him.
