This is a list of Polish inventors and discoverers. The following incomplete list comprises people from Poland and of Polish origin, and also people of predominantly Polish heritage, in alphabetical order of surname.
A Bruno Abakanowicz: invented integrapf, a mechanical analog computing device for plotting the integral of a graphically defined function. Osman Achmatowicz Jr.: specialist in the field of organic chemistry. Inventor of the Achmatowicz reaction. Karol Adamiecki: management theorist. Together with Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henry Fayola the creator of organisation and management science. In 1925 Adamiecki founded the Polish Institute of Scientific Management. Albert Wojciech Adamkiewicz: pathologist. His research of the variable vascularity of the spinal cord was an important contribution to the development of modern clinical vascular surgery. He is known for Artery of Adamkiewicz and Adamkiewicz reaction. Henryk Arctowski: scientist and explorer. Living in exile for a large part of his life, he was one of the first persons to reach Antarctica during winter and became an internationally renowned meteorologist.
B Joseph Babinski: neurologist, discoverer of the Babinski reflex. Stefan Banach: considered one of the world's most important and influential 20th-century mathematicians, creator of Banach space. 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. Feliks Barański: pioneer and the specialist in the field of Differential equations. Jan Józef Baranowski: took part in the Great Emigration. Invented Railway signal device, ticket machine and gas meter. Mieczysław G. Bekker: co-authored the general idea and vitally contributed to the design and construction of the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) used by NASA in missions Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17 on the Moon. He was the author of several patented inventions in the area of off-the-road vehicles, including those for extraterrestrial use. Benedict of Poland: Polish Franciscan friar, explorer, and interpreter, participant of the pioneering European trip to the capital of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century. Edmund Biernacki: physician, the first one to note a relationship between the sedimentation rate of red blood cells in a human blood sample and the general condition of the organism. This method is now known as the Biernacki Reaction. Michał Borysiekiewicz: invented the first "electronic eye" for blind people. Michał Boym: 17th-century Jesuit missionary, scientist and explorer, who 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. Josef Božek: managed to put into operation one of the first steam engines in the Czech lands. Stefan Bryła: designed and built the first welded road bridge in the world. Janusz Brzozowski: computer scientist known for developing the Brzozowski derivative and Brzozowski's algorithm. Tytus Liwiusz Burattini: inventor of the micrometer.
C Maria Skłodowska-Curie: conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences – physics and chemistry. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris. Nicolaus Copernicus (Mikołaj Kopernik): mathematician, physician, translator, diplomat. Most commonly known as an astronomer who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe included in his work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres). Napoleon Cybulski:, physiologist, discoverer of adrenaline, one of pioneers of endocrinology and electroencephalography. Jan Czochralski: chemist, invented the Czochralski process, commonly used for growing crystals and in the production of semiconductor wafers.
D Marian Danysz: physicist, co-discovered the hypernucleus. Kazimierz Dąbrowski: psychologist, psychiatrist, and physician, author of the theory of "positive disintegration". Henryk Derczyński: a photographer, created an isohelia technology, a technique that sharpens contrasts and defines three-dimensional images. Stefan Drzewiecki: engineer and inventor, built the first submarine in the world with electric battery-powered propulsion. Jarosław Duda: computer scientist, a graduate of Jagiellonian University and inventor of Asymmetric numeral systems (ANS), a family of entropy encoding methods widely used in data compression. Jan Dzierżon: apiarist who discovered the phenomenon of parthenogenesis in bees and designed the first successful movable-frame beehive (1838).
E Artur Ekert: physicist; one of the pioneers of quantum cryptography.
F Maksymilian Faktorowicz: founder of the Max Factor cosmetics company, popularized the term "make-up", had perfected the first cosmetic specifically created for motion picture use—a thinner greasepaint in cream form and largely developed the modern cosmetics industry in the United States. Kazimierz Fajans: physical chemist, pioneer in the science of radioactivity and the discoverer of chemical element protactinium. Edward Flatau: neurologist. Julius Fromm: chemist, entrepreneur, one of the inventors of the rubber condom. Casimir Funk:, biochemist, the first to formulate (1912) the concept and the term of vitamins originally calling them "vital amins"/"vit- amins" discovered first vitamins, i.e B1
G Leo Gerstenzang: Polish-American inventor who in 1923 created the first contemporary cotton swab or Q-Tips. Ludwik Gross: virologist. He discovered two different tumor viruses — murine leukemia virus and mouse polyomavirus — capable of causing cancers in laboratory mice. Ryszard Gryglewski: physician and pharmacologist. He co-discovered prostacyclin (1976), which set off many further scientific discoveries. Andrzej Grzegorczyk: mathematician and logician, who introduced the Grzegorczyk hierarchy, a hierarchy of functions used in computability theory. Rudolf Gundlach: military engineer, inventor and tank designer, inventor of the Vickers Tank Periscope MK.IV also known as the Gundlach Periscope.
H Józef Hofmann: musician, invented Paper clips. Johannes Hevelius: astronomer who gained a reputation as "the founder of lunar topography", and described ten new constellations, seven of which are still used by astronomers.
J Stefania Jabłońska: physician; in 1972 Jabłońska proposed the association of the human papilloma viruses with skin cancer in epidermodysplasia verruciformis; in 1978 Jabłońska and Gerard Orth discovered HPV-5 in skin cancer; Jabłońska was awarded the 1985 Robert Koch Prize. Wojciech Jastrzębowski: scientist, naturalist and inventor, one of the fathers of ergonomics. Walery Jaworski: one of the pioneers of gastroenterology in Poland who made one of the first observations of Helicobacter pylori and published those findings in 1899 in a book titled Podręcznik chorób żołądka (Handbook of Gastric Diseases).
K Jacek Karpiński: pioneer in computer engineering and computer science. He became a developer of one of the first machine learning algorithms, techniques for character and image recognition. In 1971, he designed one of the first minicomputers, the K-202. Adam Adamandy Kochański: mathematician, physicist, clockmaker, who found an approximation of π today called the Kochański's Approximation. He also suggested replacing the clock's pendulum with a spring, constructed a clock with a magnetic pendulum, and was the author of the world's first systematic paper on the construction of clocks. Jerzy Konorski: neurophysiologist, discoverer of secondary conditioned reflexes and operant conditioning. He also proposed the idea of gnostic neurons, a concept similar to the grandmother cell. He coined the term neural plasticity. Hilary Koprowski: virologist and immunologist, who developed the world's first effective live polio vaccine.Hilary Koprowski, Who Developed First Live-Virus Polio Vaccine, Dies at 96 - The New York Times, April 20, 2013. Kazimierz Kordylewski: astronomer, discoverer of the Kordylewski clouds. Józef Kosacki: invented the Polish mine detector, a first man-portable device used by the allied forces during the World War II. Tadeusz Kościuszko: Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusian and American war hero and military leader, military engineer, colonel in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, creator of the West Point state-of-the-art Fortifications, prepared a national Kosciuszko Uprising in Poland against the Russian Empire and acted as the Supreme Commander. Tadeusz Krwawicz: ophthalmologist who pioneered the use of cryosurgery in ophthalmology.A . Skłodowska, J. Szaflik. "Tadeusz Krwawicz - Distinguished Ophthalmologist and Polish Scientist (1910-1988) ". Okulistyka. 4/2007. p. 9. . Stefan Kudelski: audio engineer known for creating the Nagra series of professional audio recorders later sold to British BBC, American stations NBC, ABC, CBS, but also plenty of radio stations including famous Radio Luxembourg. Kudelski received prestigious Oscar Awards in 1965, 1977, 1978, and 1990. He also won two Emmy Awards in 1984 and 1986. Jerzy Kukuczka: alpinist, the second man in history to climb all fourteen Eight-thousanders including three as first ascents, established a new route on K2 in alpine style called the "Polish line". Wojciech Kurtyka: mountaineer, alpinist, one of the alpine style climbing pioneers, after climbing through the "Shining Wall" on Gasherbrum IV the Climbing magazine declared beat the wall to get the greatest achievement of mountaineering in the twentieth century. Stephanie Kwolek (1923–2014): American chemist of Polish origin, inventor of Kevlar.
L, Ł Ignacy Łukasiewicz: invented kerosene lamp, designed and built both world's first oil refinery and oil well. Introduced the first modern street lamp in Europe. Jan Łukasiewicz: invented RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) used in professional Calculators as well as by Computers in order to determine the order of mathematical operations without using parentheses.
M Ernest Malinowski: civil engineer best known for constructing the Ferrocarril Central Andino in the Peruvian Andes, the world's highest railway at the time.Norman Davies. God's Playground A History of Poland: Volume II: 1795 to the Present. Oxford University Press. 2005. p. 213. Henryk Manguski: a 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. Benoit Mandelbrot: mathematician of Polish descent, known for developing a theory of "roughness and self-similarity" and significant contributions to fractal geometry and chaos theory; Mandelbrot set. Krzysztof Matyjaszewski: chemist, who discovered atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). Jan Mikulicz-Radecki: surgeon, inventor of new operating techniques and tools, one of the pioneers of antiseptics and aseptic techniques. He is also the inventor of surgical mask. Ludwik Młokosiewicz: explorer, zoologist and botanist, who discovered 60 species of plants and animals in Georgia and the Caucasus. Aleksander Możajski: Polish-Russian military officer, built world's first plane.
N Jan Nagórski: engineer and pioneer of aviation, the first person to fly an airplane in the Arctic and the first aviator to perform a loop with a flying boat.
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