A SHORT HISTORY OF POLISH MATHEMATICS

At the beginning of 20 Century Poland had almost no mathematical traditions. The only widely known Polish names were Miko laj Kopernik (Nicolas Copernicus) - an astronomer, but during his times astronomy was treated as a branch of geometry, and J´ozef Hoene-Wro´nski - a philosopher and mathematician - whose name is connected with wronskian (Wronski determinant). In my talk I shall explain how, in spite of the above, Poland developed quite famous mathematical school and obtained quite good international position in some (chosen in advance) modern by then fields of mathematics. In particular, I shall describe creation and development of the Warsaw School of Mathematics, working mostly in topology, set theory and foundations of mathematics, and similar development of Lw´ow School, working mostly in functional analysis and functions of real variable. There were good chances of developping such schools also in Krak´ow, Wilno and Pozna´n, but the process was stopped by the outburst of the World War II. If time permits, I shall shortly describe the events duringWorld War II and the process of postwar rebuilding of (very seriously damaged) Polish Mathematics.

کلیدواژه ها:

History ، mathematics ، Poland