The article was inspired by a group photo of twelve young Polish scientists, taken in the summer of 1907 in Göttingen. Some of the men portrayed in it – then still scholarship holders and students – gained worldwide fame a few years later, and almost all of them became famous scientists in pre-World War II Poland. The original of the photo, ref. no. ZF.263, was stored in the Archives of Polish Mathematicians in Sopot and is currently in the Central Mathematical Library of the Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (CBM IMPAN) in Warsaw. This photograph is a valuable memento for the history of Polish science. The article aims to reestablish the actual faces and names connection of the people in the photo since even renowned experts in photography had problems with their proper identification. The text gives examples of publications with a reproduction of the photo ZF.263 (or part of it) where some people are identified incorrectly.

A flora is a publication containing a list of species of wild plants of a given region along with the information on their localities, descriptions of their morphology, and keys for their determination. Johannes Thal’s Sylva Hercynia is considered the first flora ever published. From the 18th century onwards, floras of entire Western European countries were being published. Opisanie roslin w prowincyi W. X. L. naturalnie rosnących według układu Linneusza (Description of plants in the province of the G[rand] D[uchy of] L[ithuania] naturally growing according to the Linnaeus system) by Stanisław Bonifacy Jundziłł was printed in 1791. It includes 1,297 species, comprising 1,052 flowering plants, 85 mosses, 64 fungi, 49 lichens, 34 ferns and 13 algae, and contains 97 localities from the then Polish part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and 198 from the then Lithuanian one. The species are arranged according to the Linnaeus system, and their descriptions are concise. Contrary to its title, Opisanie roslin covers both the territories of Lithuania and Poland, which is why it should also be considered the earliest modern flora of Poland. Opisanie roslin played an important role in the history of Polish botany, especially in the development of floristics in Poland and Lithuania in the early 19th century.

Władysław Jagiełło and Witold Kiejstutowicz were preparing a war with the Teutonic Order. It was decided to build a bridge across the Vistula near Czerwińsk. The wood for building about 50 riverboats (punts) and spans had to dry for several months. The works which started in February 1409 in the Kozienice Forest were coordinated by Master Jarosław and Staroste Dobrogost the Black. Teams of boatbuilders, carpenters, blacksmiths and raftsmen made the elements of the bridge (boats, spans, anchors, iron buckles). The bridge was erected between Śladow and Czerwińsk on June 28–30, 1410. The barriers on the banks and the military forces ensured an uninterrupted march of the Polish army on June 30–July 3, comprising approx. 15,000 mounted knights, several hundred heavy tabor wagons, and several dozen cannons. The combined Polish and Lithuanian-Ruthenian armies departed from Czerwińsk for the war with the Teutonic Order. The bridge was dismantled, floated to Płock and rebuilt on the Vistula near Przypust on September 24–27, 1410 for the returning Polish army.

The article aims to show the development of pediatrics in Vilnius (Wilno) in the Borderlands of the Second Polish Republic in the interwar period. The text presents the beginnings of the organizational, scientific and staffing process, and it employs the sources from the Lithuanian Central State Archives (Lietuvos centrinis valstybės archyvas), as well as address lists and medical journals from the period.

The State Zoological Museum, established in 1928, inherited and developed the legacy of the Zoological Cabinet of the University of Warsaw (existing since 1818). The Cabinet’s collection had been gathered for decades and belonged to eminent personages not only in Poland but also in Europe. The Museum and its collections were threatened many times: first by a great fire in 1935, then by the German attack on Warsaw in 1939 and subsequent occupation, as well as by the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising and the destruction of the city. After the post-war reconstruction of the Museum, it was time to function in a new political reality, in which the most significant change for this institution was the establishment of the Polish Academy of Sciences. A planned inclusion of the State Zoological Museum in the structures of the newly-founded Polish Academy of Sciences meant that the scientists had to face a dilemma: in exchange for research funds and career development opportunities, they were expected to show favour to the communists and readiness to implement the idea of socialism. In the background of this process, numerous scientific conferences took place, where controversial visions of the future of biological sciences clashed. This process resulted in the transformation of the State Zoological Museum into the Institute of Zoology of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

With reference to the existing literature, the article reviews the history of discovering rare-earth elements (lanthanides) from the late 18th to the mid-20th century. By outlining the main stages of this story, the author analyzes biographies of chemists, presents the geography of discoveries and the development of analytical methods in inorganic chemistry. The text also mentions the scientific errors and disputes between scholars. From the perspective of the philosophy of science, this history is an important example of the mutual relationship between empirical knowledge and its theoretical justification in science.

The article presents the history of preparing the history of science bibliography at the Institute for the History of Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The purpose of creating such a bibliography is to facilitate scholars’ access to publications in this field of knowledge.

The beginnings of this bibliography date back to 1966, but the official date of its creation should be 1971. The article recalls its authors and describes the thematic scope from its inception to 2008 when the publication was discontinued for financial reasons.

In 2018, the publishing of the history of science bibliography was resumed.

The article discusses the status of the history of medicine at the intersection of disciplines, with reference to the edited volume: Medicina, antiqua mediaevalis et moderna. Historia – filozofia – religia[Medicina, antiqua mediaevalis et moderna. History – Philosophy – Religion] (ed. by S. Konarska-Zimnicka, L. Kostuch and B. Wojciechowska, Kielce 2019). The author focuses on the ancient idea of the unity of body and soul to draw attention to the dependence of medical practices on cultural conditions, using the example of the recipe for headache from Plato’s Charmides and the articles in Medicina, antiqua mediaevalis et moderna.

Gajusz Pliniusz Sekundus, Historia naturalna. T. I: Kosmologia i geografia, księgi II–VI, tekst, wstęp, tłum. i komentarz I. Mikołajczyk, N. Rataj, E. Twarowska-Antczak, K. Antczak, red. I. Mikołajczyk, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UMK, Toruń 2017, ss. 759.

Gajusz Pliniusz Sekundus, Historia naturalna. T. II: Antropologia i zoologia, księgi VII–XI, tekst, wstęp, tłum. i komentarz I. Mikołajczyk, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UMK, Toruń 2019, ss. 674.

The article presents selected problems related to the Latin-Polish critical edition of the first two volumes of the Natural History by Pliny the Elder. With regard to several passages from this ancient encyclopedia, which are important for the history of astronomy, the text pinpoints the insufficiency and some inaccuracies in the scientific commentary to the second book on cosmology, both in terms of content and sources. On the selected examples from the second volume, pertaining to anthropology and zoology, the article criticizes – in comparison to previous Polish translations – the text of the new one, which is sometimes significantly inconsistent with the Latin original.