Henryk Hoyer (1834–1907) entered the history of Polish medicine as an outstanding histologist and physiologist. After medical studies in Wrocław and Berlin, he eventually settled in Warsaw, taking over, in 1859, the chair of physiology and histology at the Warsaw Medical-Surgical Academy, transformed into the Medical Faculty of the Warsaw Main School, and later into the Imperial University of Warsaw. Polish histology owes much to Hoyer: he established the first histological and physiological laboratory on the Polish territory, becoming the first Polish histologist. He also published the first Polish histology textbook, introducing new scientific terminology into Polish.

The article is a critical analysis of the book chapter of Histologia ciała ludzkiego (“Histology of the human body”) devoted to nervous tissue. The work reflects the concepts of microstructure and function of the nervous system that prevailed in the mid-19^th century. The author was clearly inclined towards the reticular theory which emerged at the time, however in all honestly he left many issues as open questions.

Hoyer’s work deserves special attention, because it gives an insight into the state of knowledge, but also into the way of reasoning of the 19^th-century pioneers of physiology and histology.

For the first quarter of the 20^th century, the Curie Laboratory and the Ernest Rutherford Laboratory were the two main research centers for radioactivity. Both dealt with the same field, but had different priorities from the beginning. The Paris laboratory focused on discovering and studying the properties of new radioactive elements, while Rutherford in his laboratories in Montreal, and later in Manchester and Cambridge, tried, above all, to explain the very nature of radioactivity. There was a clear competition between the two laboratories, which, however, did not preclude personal and scholarly cooperation between their heads of research, i.e. Maria Skłodowska-Curie and Ernest Rutherford.

The article discusses the main topics of this collaboration, such as developing a radium template, assigning scientific terminology, organizing scientific conferences, and preparing students. In addition, a few passages were devoted to the private relations between both scientists, which had a direct impact on their collaboration.

The article discusses higher education in engineering and technology of the second generation of the Polish Great Emigration in France. It begins with an overview of the network of grandes écoles functioning in the second half of the 19^th century, admission and study rules, and the position of these schools within the entire system of higher education. Then it presents the biographies of outstanding graduates of the Polish émigré school at Batignolles, who managed to enrol at the government schools in question. Selected, little-known careers of émigré students are shown as part of the upward mobility trend within the whole generation. The author also tackles the problem of preserving Polish national identity in the context of France’s cultural elite.

The article focuses on the problems of Soviet ‘politics of history’ in the Eastern Bloc in 1945–1989 by the example of selected Slavic countries: Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. The implementation of the Soviet system of political control over history proceeded extremely reluctantly and with varying intensity depending on the historical period and particular country. The scope and degree of interference into the affairs of local disciplines of history in above-mentioned countries changed with the political situation and new tendencies in social and political life. Actions aimed at the history of Slavic countries were sanctioned by the CPSU and implemented in accordance with the interests of the State and the Communist Party of the USSR. Kremlin inspired and subsequently oversaw the realization of joint academic projects, provided guidelines on how to research and interpret historic events, thus constituting a significant element of its ‘politics of history’.

Having found conflicting versions of the past in publications on the history of Soviet medicine, the authors of the article problematized the evidence with which historians work. This led to the study of the production and interaction of statistical and narrative statements of the health care authorities of the 1930s, that is, their reporting and futuristic pipe dreams. The comparison of the medical statistics published in the official directories and the current reporting of medical institutions revealed discrepancies between the published and collected information. Criticism of the official figures by contemporaries gave researchers the opportunity to reveal material and construction technologies of a utopian reality, from the power of which even modern researchers find it hard to free themselves.

The article describes the hitherto unknown remains of the measuring station from 1828, determined by Franciszek Armiński as the starting point of the reference system for the Triangular Network of the Old-Polish Industrial Region in 1829–1835. The author also presents postulates regarding the protection of the discovered residues and popularization of knowledge about them.

In the first half of the 1950s, the authorities and the scientific community of the Polish People’s Republic noticed the growing importance of electronic computing. The freedom of Polish science and the research and development sector was hindered by limited access to western centers, as well as a trade embargo on computers and measuring and testing equipment. This deficit was compensated to a small extent by the scientific and technical contacts developing in the 1960s with the USSR and with other partners from the Comecon. Documentation obtained mostly in Western European countries and, to a lesser extent, in the USA by Polish intelligence served as an additional source of knowledge for the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic and the newly opened production centers. However, the greatest successes in acquiring know-how were achieved not through the use of illegal methods, but through official negotiations with Western partners. The culminating moment of the ‘democratic’ (free) development of the computer industry in the Polish People’s Republic was when the ELWRO company signed the contract with the British ICT (later ICL) company in 1967. Unfortunately, it coincided with the inauguration of talks by Moscow in the Eastern Bloc on the unification of computer systems, the socalled RIAD, during the Comecon forum. The interests of the computer industry of the USSR as a superpower and the Polish People’s Republic as its satellite were on a collision course for a while.

The inside story of the accession of the Polish People’s Republic to the RIAD program was reconstructed as a result of analysis of documents created in the Polish institutions supervising the Polish computer industry in its first developmenal phase (preceding Edward Gierek’s 1970–1980 tenure and RIAD). To supplement and verify the above sources, the author also selectively used other archives, which in perspective can be very useful for understanding the factors behind the creation of RIAD and determining the role of Poland in this program.

The article presents multidirectional research carried out in the Chemical-Analytical Laboratory of the Warsaw Pharmaceutical Society. Some of these studies were of an intervention nature – they were to clarify the then-current issues related to drug counterfeiting of medicines and food adulteration as well as drinking water control. Other research served to expand pharmacy knowledge. These tests were carried out by Michał Białobrzeski and Stanisław Weil.

The article discusses the content of the first issue of the ‘Fragmentology’ journal, published in 2018 as part of the project Fragmentarium. Digital Research Laboratory for Medieval Manuscript Fragments. The text also points out new trends and perspectives for research on medieval fragments.

The aim of the article is to review the book Polen verstehen. Geschichte, Politik, Gesellschaft by Gerhard Gnauck, a German historian, political scientist, journalist and correspondent of ‘Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’. It was published in Stuttgart in 2018, and in July 2019 it was presented in Poland at the office of the Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation in Warsaw. The review article ponders on how Gnauck’s monograph should be qualified, whether or not it bears a scientific character; further, if it can be considered a German-language compendium of knowledge about the history of Poland and current socio-political conditions in this country. The tasks that the author set out in his work are discussed and an attempt is made to answer the question to what extent the outlined plans were achieved. The last part of the text reflects on the importance of the monograph to the German reader and German-Polish relations.