MikoÅ‚aj Kopernik (1473 – 1543) was a Renaissance-era astronomer who can accurately be described as a true Renaissance man. First coined in the early 20th century, the expression describes a well-educated person who excels in a wide variety of fields. Fulfilling this ideal, Copernicus was a mathematician, astronomer, church jurist with a doctorate in law,…

Ernest Malinowski’s dream was to build a railroad that “will reach the cloudsâ€. Born in Poland in 1818, Malinowski came to Peru when Spain was trying to hold on to its last colonies. Considered a hero in the Battle of Callao, Malinowski helped Peru maintain its sovereignty in a time of need. Malinowski would go…

Hilary Koprowski (1916 – 2013) was a Polish virologist and immunologist active in the United States who demonstrated the world’s first orally administered, effective live polio vaccine. Hilary Koprowski was born in Warsaw to an assimilated Jewish family and, from age twelve, took piano lessons at the Warsaw Conservatory. He received a medical degree from…

Marie SkÅ‚odowska Curie (1867-1934) was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two separate sciences, physics and chemistry. She shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and…

This is a story of a lonely genius inventor, and of several systems that failed to protect him from the rapacity of modern capitalism. It is also the story of how modern, large digital companies operate, and a commentary on Poland’s still unsteady entry onto the stage of the world’s knowledge economy.  Efficient data processing…

Rudolf Weigl (1883 – 1957) invented the first effective vaccine against epidemic typhus, a disease that terrified the Germans because it had killed thousands of their soldiers in World War I. He founded the Weigl Institute in Lwów, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine), where he conducted his vaccine research. During World War II, he harbored Jews…

StanisÅ‚aw Ulam (1909 – 1984) was a Polish-Jewish mathematician and nuclear physicist who later became a U.S. citizen. He participated in the Manhattan Project, originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons, discovered the concept of the cellular automaton, invented the Monte Carlo method of computation, and theorized nuclear propulsion. StanisÅ‚aw Ulam (1909 – 1984) Ulam…