3. Stefan Banach was a Polish mathematician who is generally
considered one of the world's most important and influential
20th-century mathematicians. He was one of the founders of
modern functional analysis, and an original member of the Lwów
School of Mathematics. His major work was the 1932
book, Théorie des opérations linéaires (Theory of Linear
Operations), the first monograph on the general theory of
functional analysis.
5. Zygmunt Janiszewski was a Polish mathematician. While
Janiszewski best remembered for his many contributions
to topological mathematics in the early 20th century, for the
founding of Fundamenta Mathematicae, and for his enthusiasm for
teaching young minds, his loyalty to his homeland during World
War I perhaps gives the greatest insight into his psyche. The
orphans' shelter that he set up during the war doubtlessly saved
many lives, and is perhaps his greatest contribution to the world.
7. Kazimierz Kuratowski was a Polish mathematician and logician. Among over
170 published works are valuable monographs and books including Topologie
and Introduction to Set Theory and Topology. He authored „Half Century of
Polish Mathematics 1920-1970: Remembrances and Reflections” and "Notes to
his autobiography”. The latter was published posthumously thanks to
Kuratowski's daughter Zofia Kuratowska, who prepared his notes for printing.
Kazimierz Kuratowski represented Polish mathematics in the International
Mathematics Union where he was vice president from 1963 to 1966. What is
more, he participated in numerous international congresses and lectured at
dozens of universities around the world. He received the highest national awards,
as well as a gold medal of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, and the Polish
Academy of Sciences.
9. Karol Borsuk 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.
11. Stanisław Mazur 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 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.
