In the article we present the report from the memorial session of prof. Andrzej Pelczar (1937–2010), organized online on June 2, 2020 by the Board of the Krakow Branch of the Polish Mathematical Society.

We familiarize the reader with the profile of A. Pelczar (1937–2010) and some of his achievements recalled during the session. We invoke also fragments of statements made by participants of the session.

The article outlines the seventh phase of the development of the journal Studia Historiae Scientiarum (previous name Prace Komisji Historii Nauki PAU / Proceedings of the PAU Commission on the History of Science).

The information is provided on the following matters: the realization of the ministerial program “Support for scientific journals 2019–2020”, the evaluation of the journal in “ICI Master Journal List 2018” (published at the end of 2019), in Scimago Journal Ranks 2019 (published on 11 June 2020), in CWTS Journal Indicators (published on the beginning of June 2020) and in Scopus (published on 6 June 2020), a systemic obstacle in the further developing of the journal related to the journal’s underrated rating in the “List of journals of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Polish Republic 2019” (published on 31 July 2019 and 18 December 2020), the indexation of the journal in the Scopus database (from September 2019), the works on updating the journal’s website in OJS (3.1.2.), and the number of foreign authors and the number of reviewers of the current volume of the journal.

The article outlines the seventh phase of the development of the journal Studia Historiae Scientiarum (previous name Prace Komisji Historii Nauki PAU / Proceedings of the PAU Commission on the History of Science).

The information is provided on the following matters: the realization of the ministerial program “Support for scientific journals 2019–2020”, the evaluation of the journal in “ICI Master Journal List 2018” (published at the end of 2019), in Scimago Journal Ranks 2019 (published on 11 June 2020), in CWTS Journal Indicators (published on the beginning of June 2020) and in Scopus (published on 6 June 2020), a systemic obstacle in the further developing of the journal related to the journal’s underrated rating in the “List of journals of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Polish Republic 2019” (published on 31 July 2019 and 18 December 2020), the indexation of the journal in the Scopus database (from September 2019), the works on updating the journal’s website in OJS (3.1.2.), and the number of foreign authors and the number of reviewers of the current volume of the journal.

Samuel Dickstein founded the journal Wiadomości Matematyczne in Warszaw, of which he edited and published 47 volumes in the years 1897–1939. One of them (volume XXV, 1921) presented the scientific work (thesis) of the famous 19^th century scholar and teacher – Ignacy Domeyko (1802–1889). It was written in 1822 to obtain a master’s degree in philosophy at University of Vilna (Wilno, now Vilnius). The original manuscript of I. Domeyko is has not been preserved.

This report reveals the circumstances and content of the master’s dissertation written by I. Domeyko.

The aim of this paper is to present one of the pioneers of Polish microbiology, Seweryn Józef Krzemieniewski, as a scholar with humanistic and interdisciplinary interests. His work covered primarily the history of botany and was an important contribution to the development of this discipline in the interwar period in Poland. Krzemieniewski is the author of works analyzing the research of Michał Boym, a missionary in China, as well as of an article presenting the history of botany in Lviv. He also prepared biographies of Polish botanists, but not all of them were published. Additionally, the scientist was involved for several years in intensive work in nature conservation, which makes it possible to include him in the group of leading activists in this field in Poland of that period.

Krzemieniewski’s belief in the fundamental importance of education for the development of conscious and environmentally sensitive society seems to be at the root of his humanistic activities, which is clearly visible in his published works. This idea is also reflected in his activities as a popularizer of natural science and a lecturer.

This article presents the scientific biography of Tadeusz Konrad Przypkowski (1905–1977), an outstanding expert in the field of gnomonics. This is the first such comprehensive study of this subject in literature. T.K. Przypkowski was a historian of art and science, and obtained his doctorate in 1929 based on the work of Jan Pfister, a 17th century sculptor, and he received a tenure in 1965 based on the work Scientific concept of magnetic declination in Poland. From an early age, he was interested in gnomonics, and would reconstruct and create new sundials, as well as restore antique ones. He conducted research, published articles in scientific and popular scientific journals. His passion for gnomonics made him an outstanding specialist known and appreciated at home and in the world. He was a consultant and a sundial maker many times. He participated in symposia and scientific conferences at which he delivered papers enthusiastically received by participants. To this day his works can be sees and admired in many cities in Poland and abroad.

Most of the proposals for reforms at the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, submitted in 1945–1950, concerned the adaptation of the Academy to further specialization in the world of science. Discussed in the article, the previously unknown, initiative of the eminent philosopher Roman Ingarden was of a different nature. The institute, he was designing, was to be the center of permanent scientific cooperation between scientists from natural and humanities sciences.

Using the archive sources and publications, the circumstances of this idea creation were also discussed. The reasons why this initiative was not implemented were also described.

Ingarden believed that research conducted as part of the Institute’s experimental labs should cover basic practical issues both for entire communities and individual people. They were to concern, i.a. the nature of man, his role in the world; separateness and kinship to other living beings. The philosopher also proposed testing new research methods at the Institute and training numerous scientists in their application.

In practice, the idea of establishing the Institute of Human Sciences of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences was contrary to the policy of the state authorities at that time.

The article presents the character of Andrzej Pelczar (1937–2010): his genealogical pedigree, sketchy scientific biography, list of performed public functions, achievements in the history and philosophy of science against the achievements of the Kraków mathematical environment, and also it updates the information on the numerical state of the Kraków mathematical environment and Warsaw mathematical school.

This article aims to trace the mobility of scholars and sciences between France and Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland in the 14th and 15th centuries, seen from the perspective of prosopography. 

These exchanges were concentrated in only three oldest French universities of Montpellier, Orléans and Paris, albeit with significant variations, and in the newly-founded universities north of the Alps in the 14th century, namely those in Prague and Kraków.

Mobility was less important and intensive at the end of the Middle Ages because of the policy in favour of establishing national universities. The names of 143 scholars from Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland, who were enrolled in the 14th and 15th centuries in French universities, have been found so far. Several of them played important roles in the history of science in these countries. 

This article uses the work of Anna Semper (1826–1909) to explore the possibilities for understanding women’s contributions to the development of science in Germany from the second half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. By examining the publications of her husband, the naturalist Carl Semper (1832–1893), as well as those of other scholars, traces of the ways that she produced scientific knowledge begin to emerge. Because the Sempers’ work took place in the context of the Philippines and Palau, two different Spanish colonies, and formed the basis of Carl’s professional career, this article also analyzes Anna’s role in the creation of an explicitly colonial science.

Despite the previous overview studies on Polish and East German archaeology and historiography after 1945, further analyses of the relationship between science and politics as well as of the inner-disciplinary processes and discourses in the “Cold War” period are still needed. This applies in particular to the research field of “Slavic archaeology”, the archaeological and historiographical research on the “Slavs” in prehistorical and early medieval times.

With regard to recent demands for an extended and more dynamic understanding of science and new methodological approaches in the history of science (and of archaeology as well), this paper focuses on two leading figures of “Slavic archaeology”, Witold Hensel (PPR) and Joachim Herrmann (GDR), as case studies to provide more insights into this discipline.

Analysing the course of Hensel’s and Herrmann’s careers and of their way to the “Slavs” as one of their main research interests, their administrative functions as institutional directors and the central narratives of their publications on the early “Slavs”, provides the opportunity to profoundly dissect the interrelations between scholarly work, politics, and ideology in this field of research.

The comparative approach also makes it possible to identify parallel tendencies in Eastern German and Polish “Slavic archaeology” as well as specific national conditions and developments.

On the example of Hensel and Herrmann, it becomes clear that the implemented biographical-comparative perspective is fruitful and can be used for further research in the history of science.

The paper presents engineering interests of Isaac Newton, including some of his technical inventions. So far, this topic has not been studied in a broader manner and in more depth. This article discusses Newton’s youthful passions against the backdrop of the so-called mathematical magic literature. His two inventions, i.e. variants of the reflecting telescope and the marine octant are also discussed. Finally, an example is provided of the involvement of the author of Principia in a discussion around the steam engine and the ship powered by such engine designed by Denis Papin.

The main goal of the research project is an evaluation of the impact of studies and scientific visits of Polish scientists in the world mathematical centre, which was Georg-August Univeristy in Göttingen, on their careers.

The results presented in this report focuses on the scholarship holders of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Kraków and the Jagiellonian University. A time-frame for the article are the dates of visit of the first and the last scholarship holders in Göttingen. A brief history of the Osławski’s Fund, Dr. Władysław Kretkowski’s and Kazimierz Klimowski’s Fund and the fellows – mathematicians: Leon Chwistek, Antoni Hoborski, Stanisław Kępiński, Stanisław Ruziewicz, Włodzimierz Stożek, Władysław Ślebodziński and Franciszek Włodarski are presented in the article. The archival documents cited in the article are presented in print for the first time.

An analysis of the reasons that urged young Polish scholars to choose Göttingen for their foreign studies is given. An evaluation of the impact of their studies in Göttingen on their future research areas was done.

An introduction to the article is a very brief history of mathematicians, mathematics and mathematical education in Georg-August University in Göttingen in the period 1885–1914.

The principal mathematical idea behind the statistical properties of black-body radiation (photons) was introduced already by L. Boltzmann (1877/2015) and used by M. Planck (1900; 1906) to derive the frequency distribution of radiation (Planck’s law) when its discrete (quantum) structure was additionally added to the reasoning.

The fundamental physical idea – the principle of indistinguishability of the quanta (photons) – had been somewhat hidden behind the formalism and evolved slowly.

Here the role of P. Debye (1910), H. Kamerlingh Onnes and P. Ehrenfest (1914) is briefly elaborated and the crucial role of W. Natanson (1911a; 1911b; 1913) is emphasized.

The reintroduction of this Natanson’s statistics by S. N. Bose (1924/2009) for light quanta (called photons since the late 1920s), and its subsequent generalization to material particles by A. Einstein (1924; 1925) is regarded as the most direct and transparent, but involves the concept of grand canonical ensemble of J. W. Gibbs (1902/1981), which in a way obscures the indistinguishability of the particles involved.

It was ingeniously reintroduced by P. A. M. Dirac (1926) via postulating (imposing) the transposition symmetry onto the many-particle wave function.

The above statements are discussed in this paper, including the recent idea of the author (Spałek 2020) of transformation (transmutation) – under specific conditions – of the indistinguishable particles into the corresponding to them distinguishable quantum particles.

The last remark may serve as a form of the author’s post scriptum to the indistinguishability principle.

The article presents the first part of the correspondence of Eileen and Florian Znaniecki, which is located in the Archives of the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York. It shows many unknown threads from the life of Znaniecki family, especially Florian – one of the most outstanding Polish sociologist, a professor at the University of Poznań, who worked for many years in the United States of America.

The presented edition includes letters with Stefan Piotr Mierzwa, who used the name Stephen Peter Mizwa in English, and Edith Brahmall Cullis-Williams.

Mierzwa was the founder of the Kościuszko Foundation, a long-term executive director of the foundation, and finally its president. Thanks to his activities for the cultural and scientific rapprochement between Poland and America, he became, if not one of the most important figures in the life of American Polonia in the twentieth century, so certainly among the New York State Poles.

Cullis-Williams was the founder and president of the Polish Institute of Arts and Literature in New York City and a well known American polonophile in the American environment.

The archives of the Kościuszko Foundation have survived copies of Mierza’s letters written to Znaniecki.

Copies of Cullis-Williams letters have not been preserved in this collection, but even those sent to her by Eileen, presented in this edition, perfectly complement the picture of American relationships and social relations of the Znaniecki marriage emerging from other sources.

Chronologically, the letters cover the period 1923–1940 and show the beginnings of Znaniecki's cooperation with the Kosciuszko Foundation. What is more, the collection brings a little new light to Znaniecki’s presence in New York in 1931–1933 and the first months of the Poznań sociologist’s stay in the United States of America in 1940.

The article familiarizes the readers with the stay of A. Pelczar (1937–2010) in France and his encounters with mathematicians working and staying in the prestigious Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in Bures-sur-Yvette (IHÉS) and Université Paris XI (Faculté des Sciences d’Orsay). The future founder of the Kraków school of dynamical systems had an opportunity to meet the following mathematicians, among others: M. Artin, A. Grothendieck, N. Kuiper, B. Malgrange, J. Mather, P. Deligne, R. Thom, Ch. Zeeman.

The article was written thanks to the memories of Jacek Bochnak, the companion of Pelczar in France, nowadays a renowned professor of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

The article presents facts about the hitherto pending “Complaint calling for a correction of the score given to the journal Studia Historiae Scientiarum from 20 to 70 points” (of September 9, 2019 and of January 15, 2020) addressed to the Science Evaluation Commission of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Polish Government.

It analyzes publicly available information on the presence of Polish journals on ‘history’, ‘history of science’ and ‘history and philosophy of science’ in indexation databases or journal libraries and their bibliometric indicators. This information is compared with the scoring awarded in the ministerial evaluation of journals in 2019.

Since the ministerial scoring is not related to the actual achievements of the journal of the Commission on the History of Science, Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, urgent change in the scoring of this journal has been demanded.

We give an overview of the seventh volume of series IVA of the Birkhäuser edition of Leonhard Euler’s complete works and correspondence. This volume contains Euler’s correspondence in French with ten of his Swiss countrymen: Louis Bertrand, Charles Bonnet, Marc-Michel Bousquet, Jean de Castillon, Gabriel Cramer, Philibert Cramer, Gaspard Cuentz, Albrecht von Haller, Georges-Louis Lesage and Johan Caspar Wettstein. A letter of the German Johann Michael von Loën to Euler, mentioned in the Euler-Bertrand letter exchange is also included as well as the recently rediscovered first letter of Euler to Jean le Rond d’Alembert in supplement. The letters cover a large range of topics also outside Euler’s mathematical and physical interests giving a new insight into his non-scientific activities, and thus casting also a new light on this great scientist as a person.

International Conference “The War That Never Ended. Postwar Continuity and New Challenges in the Aftermath of the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, 1918–1923”, organized on 24–26 October 2019 in Krakow and Przemyśl, it was an excellent opportunity to discuss the phenomenon of key years 1918–1923 in the history of countries that arose from the ruins of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire. The truce in Compiegne (11.11.1918), as has been proven many times in historiography, had only symbolic significance for Central and Eastern and Southeastern Europe and did not bring decisive decisions for the region. This area became a place of numerous conflicts over borders, ethnic and social friction, resettlement of people, the involvement of intellectuals in politics or even violence aimed at physical elimination of entire groups and communities. It turns out that the new nation-states in this formation period strongly benefited from the imperial heritage of their predecessors, despite the declaration of paving new roads. The conference gathered almost 40 speakers from many European countries as well as from Canada and the United States of America.

The article sketches the subject matter and the course of the first videoconference in the history of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of the History of Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences: “The Polish journals on the history and philosophy of science and the science of science: How to get to Scopus, WoS, ICI, DOAJ and ERIH+. Why is it worth doing?” (Krakow – Warsaw – Toruń, 16 April 2020, 10.00–15.00).

The conference was organized on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Commission on the History of Science at the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, and to mark the establishment of the Laboratory for the Science of Science at the Institute for the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, currently the only one (!) unit for the science of science in Poland.

The report discusses the activities of the Commission on the History of Science of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019/2020. It presents the lists of scientific meetings, conferences, symposia, and new publications.

The report discusses the activities of the Commission on the History of Science of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019/2020. It presents the lists of scientific meetings, conferences, symposia, and new publications.