Timeline of Polish science and technology

Timeline of the history of science and technology in Poland

Education has been of prime interest to Poland's rulers since the early 12th century. The catalog of the library of the Cathedral Chapter in Kraków dating from 1110 shows that Polish scholars already then had access to western European literature. In 1364, King Casimir III the Great founded the Cracow Academy, which would become one of the great universities of Europe. The Polish people have made considerable contributions in the fields of science, technology and mathematics. The list of famous scientists in Poland begins in earnest with the polymath, astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus, who formulated the heliocentric theory and sparked the European Scientific Revolution. In 1773 King Stanisław August Poniatowski established the Commission of National Education (Komisja Edukacji Narodowej, KEN), the world's first ministry of education. After the third partition of Poland, in 1795, no Polish state existed. The 19th and 20th centuries saw many Polish scientists working abroad. One of them was Maria Skłodowska Curie, a physicist and chemist living in France. Another noteworthy one was Ignacy Domeyko, a geologist and mineralogist who worked in Chile. In the first half of the 20th century, Poland was a flourishing center of mathematics. Outstanding Polish mathematicians formed the Lwów School of Mathematics (with Stefan Banach, Hugo Steinhaus, Stanisław Ulam) and Warsaw School of Mathematics (with Alfred Tarski, Kazimierz Kuratowski, Wacław Sierpiński). The events of World War II pushed many of them into exile. Such was the case of Benoît Mandelbrot, whose family left Poland when he was still a child. An alumnus of the Warsaw School of Mathematics was Antoni Zygmund, one of the shapers of 20th century mathematical analysis. According to NASA, Polish scientists were among the pioneers of rocketry. Today Poland has over 100 institutions of post secondary education — technical, medical, economic, as well as 500 universities — which are located in most major cities such as Gdańsk, Kraków, Lublin, Łódź, Poznań, Rzeszów, Toruń, Warsaw and Wrocław. They employ over 61,000 scientists and scholars. Another 300 research and development institutes are home to some 10,000 researchers. There are, in addition, a number of smaller laboratories. All together, these institutions support some 91,000 scientists and scholars.

Monika Mościbrodzka, Polish astrophysictst known for pioneering the development of numerical astrophysics, which can be used in combination with experimental observations to test general relativity. These studies contributed to the first ever direct image of a black hole, specifically, the supermassive black hole at the centre of Messier 87. Olga Malinkiewicz, Polish physicist and inventor of a method of producing solar cells based on perovskites using inkjet printing. Lidia Morawska, Polish Australian physicist whose work focuses on fundamental and applied research in the interdisciplinary field of air quality and its impact on human health, with a specific focus on atmospheric fine, ultrafine and nanoparticles. In 2020, she contributed to the area of airborne infection transmission of viruses, including COVID 19. Jarosław Duda, a graduate and employee of Jagiellonian University and inventor of asymmetric numeral systems (ANS), a family of entropy encoding methods widely used in data compression, to encode data e. g. by Facebook Zstandard, Apple LZFSE, CRAM or JPEG XL. Poland joins the European Southern Observatory ESO (2014), 16 nation intergovernmental research organisation for astronomy. Poland becomes a member the European Space Agency (2012). PW Sat, the first Polish satellite was launched into space (2012); other Polish satellites include Lem and Heweliusz. Piorun (missile), a man portable air defense system designed to destroy low flying aircraft, airplanes, helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles. AHS Krab, a 155 mm NATO compatible self propelled tracked gun howitzer designed in Poland by Huta Stalowa Wola. Polish Artificial Heart Program launched by the Foundation for Cardiac Surgery Development in Zabrze. Graphene acquisition, in 2011 the Institute of Electronic Materials Technology and Department of Physics, Warsaw University announced a joint development of acquisition technology of large pieces of graphene with the best quality so far. In April the same year, Polish scientists with support from the Polish Ministry of Economy began the procedure for granting a patent to their discovery around the world. Maximal entropy random walk (MERW) is a popular type of biased random walk on a graph, used e. g. in complex network analysis, image analysis, tractography, physics, which was started by article from Jagiellonian University. Sylwester Porowski, Polish physicist specializing in solid state and high pressure physics. In 2001, he led a team of Polish scientists who built a blue semiconductor laser, first blue laser in Poland and third in the world. Wojciech H. Zurek, Polish American theoretical physicist and a leading authority on quantum theory, especially decoherence and non equilibrium dynamics of symmetry breaking and resulting defect generation; Kibble–Zurek mechanism, Kibble–Zurek scaling laws, quantum discord, einselection, quantum Darwinism, no cloning theorem.

Commission of National Education (Komisja Edukacji Narodowej), founded in 1773, was the world's first national Ministry of Education. Stanisław Staszic was an outstanding Polish philosopher, statesman, Catholic priest, geologist, translator, poet and writer — almost a one man academy of sciences. The Polish Academy of Sciences' Staszic Palace, in Warsaw, is named after him; one of the founding fathers of the Constitution of May 3, 1791 – the world's second and Europe's first written constitution and a crowning achievement of the Polish Enlightenment
Józef Maria Hoene Wroński, Polish Messianist philosopher, mathematician, physicist, inventor, lawyer, and economist; he is credited with formulating the Wronskian and developing the system of continuous track.

Kraków Academy (Akademia Krakowska) was founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great. Witelo (ca. 1230 – ca. 1314), was a philosopher and a scientist who specialized in optics. His famous optical treatise, Perspectiva, which drew on the Arabic Book of Optics by Alhazen, was unique in Latin literature and helped give rise to Roger Bacon's best work. In 1284, he described the reflection and refraction of light. In addition to optics, Witelo's treatise made important contributions to the psychology of visual perception.