Zygmunt Rewkowski – nieznany polski ekonomista i statystyk

Abstract

Zygmunt Rewkowski received the Vilnius University’s Chair of the Probabilistic Theory – established specially for him – when he was only twenty two. Unfortunately, two years later, in the repressions following the November Uprising, the czar of Russia dissolved the University, and after the following two years the tsarist authorities exiled the young academic for twenty-fi ve years of military service in the Caucasus. After serving the punishment, he worked as a communications engineer for the next quarter of a century. During that period, i.e. at the end of the nineteen sixties, he undertook independent research in the fi eld of Economics. Using the tools of Mathematics he created a general theory of works which aimed at designating a minimum price and the optimum time of work. Z. Rewkowski, as the fi rst of Polish economists, applied differential calculus for this designation. By insisting on the creation of conditions for good work, he became a forerunner of Praxeology to be co-created several decades later by Tadeusz Kotarbinski. In addition to the mathematic and economic works he also published a statistical treatise devoted to the average, and the method of the sum of squares of errors. The average were used to estimate the parameters of the general price equation which form part of his theory of works. In this way he joined the group of forerunners of Econometrics. In the nineties he applied statistical methods to medical research. Despite all this, he remained unknown as a theoretician of Statistics and forgotten as a theoretician of Economics.