Tadeusz Ważewski
Scholar and Teacher
Tadeusz Ważewski was born on September 24, 1996 in the village of Wygnanka in what is currently western Ukraine. He died on September 5, 1972. He began his middle school education in Przemysł and later in the gymnazium in Mielc (1906-1911) and Tarnów (1911-1914) where he passed the school-leaving certificate (matura). In the years 1914 -20 he was a student in what was then the Department of Philosophy at the Jagiellonian University, initially studying phisics, but then, under the influence of Stanisław Zaremba, switching to mathematics, continuing these studies with what he referred to as interruption caused by military service.
The then developing set theory and topology were the fields in which he was first interested, even though, or perhaps because that these fields were not being investigated in Kraków. It is from this period that date his earliest publications.
He continued his studies in France in the years 1921-23 gaining a doctorate from the University of Paris in 1924. An Assistant Professor at the Academy of Mining and Metallurgy in Kraków through 1926, he then joined the Jagiellonian University, becoming a Professor extra-ordinary in 1933. On the 16th of September, 1939 he was arrested with other Jagiellonian Professors by the Nazi occupiers under the Sonderaktion Karkau and sent to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. After being released he worked in the Kraków School of Commerce and independently of that took part in the secret activities of the Jagiellonian University (which had been officialy closed by the Nazis but continued it education mission underground). He was elevated to the rank of Ordinary Professor in September 1945 and continued to teach at the University until his retirement.
The above text is a partial translation by Peter K. Gessner of a Polish language article of the same title by Andrzej Pelczar
