Submissions should be uploaded to http://tmin.edmgr.com or to be sent directly to Dirk Huylebrouck, huylebrouck@gmail.com S tefan Banach (1892–1945) is regarded as the best Polish mathematician in history. Almost all his mathematical results were obtained in Lvov, where he worked after 1920. Nevertheless, he spent his youth in Krakow, and there in 1919 he took part in an event that was very important to Polish mathematics. In 1795 Poland lost its independence. Regaining it at the end of World War I created favourable conditions for the establishment of national learned societies. On April 2, 1919, a special meeting of mathematicians was convened in Krakow in the building at No. 12 St. Anne Street that housed the Mathematics Seminar of the Jagiellonian University (Fig. 1): Krakow mathematicians had decided to establish a Mathematical Society in their town to advance pure and applied mathematics. Sixteen mathematicians took part in the session; all of them became founding members of the society, and Stefan Banach was among them. Stanislaw Zaremba was elected the President of the Society. In the following months, mathematicians from other academic centres, including Warsaw, joined in, among them Waclaw Sierpinski, Zygmunt Janiszewski, and Stefan Mazurkiewicz (in September 1919). OnApril 21, 1920, the societyofficially changed its name to the Polish Mathematical Society; its statutes recognise the constitution meeting in Krakow in April 1919 as the date of its foundation. The names of mathematicians who set up the society, their occupations, and addresses are listed in the minutes of the April 2, 1919, meeting (Figs. 2, 3). Of the sixteen founders of the society, sixwere academic staff, seven taught in secondary schools (called in Polish gymnasia), and onewas anengineer; theoccupations of the remaining two, includingBanach,were not mentioned, as they were unemployed. Isn’t it surprising