Observations on the development of science in Poland

Abstract

From Independence to the End of the Second World War Perhaps it is worth while starting with an anecdote, which is, unfortunately, authentic. In 1920, at the beginning of Poland's independence, Professor Jan Czekanowski brought forward the following contrast from his own budget. His annual fee as fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society in London came to 1,886 Austrian crowns, whereas the quarterly appropriation of the University of Lwow for the institute of anthropology and ethnology of which he was director amounted to 67 crowns. Speaking about the economic situation of science and its future, he said sadly but forthrightly: "The disregard of our society for the situation of science and scholarship in Poland is not explained by commonplace remarks such as that Poland is poor." 1 The incessant difficulties imposed by a paucity of material resources did not lessen the respect of important parts of Polish society for all that bore on high culture. Many young persons completed their university studies abroad, if they could not go to the Polish universities of Cracow or Lwow. Those young people contributed greatly to the reorganisation of Polish higher education when the new Polish state was established after the First World War. How young they were then is attested by the fact that many of them, although now in retirement, still continue to work and even now represent Polish science on the international scene. Ten years after the end of the First World War, in his Remarks on the Organisation of Scientific Research in Poland ,2 Professor Wojciech Swietoslawski, as Minister of Public Education, pointed out that there were about 100,000 to 120,000 posts for which persons with higher education were needed. There were 800 departments in colleges and universities, there were 1,100 professorships and 1,400 academic assistants. Professor Swietoslawski demanded an increase in the number of departments to 1,000 and in that of academic assistants to 2,000. This seemed