This is a different kind of metanode. I'm not going to have a lot of information about each mathematician, so it would be wasteful to have this in separate writeups. So instead I'm going to put all of the information here, at least until the writeup becomes too long. I do encourage people to do longer writeups at the proper nodes, so that this can function as the other kind of metanode.

There have been a number of famous mathematicians, especially in the 19. and especially 20. centuries, from Poland or of Polish descent. Here are a few, with some information; I will fill in more information as I get time. If you have any additions to the list, please /msg me.

The Warszawa and Lwów (now Lvov in the Ukraine) schools of mathematics were very active in the first half of the 20th century. Warsaw focused primarily on set theory, topology, and mathematical logic; Lwów focused on topology and functional analysis. Unfortunately, first the Nazis, then to a lesser extent Stalin, saw fit to heavily oppress academics in Poland. As a result, many mathematicians were forced underground; others fled to the U.S. and elsewhere (perhaps most famously Alfred Tarski, who went on to teach at Stanford). The mathematical community in Poland never fully recovered.

The computer science program of my alma mater, University of Kentucky, has a number of Polish mathematicians and computer science. My databases instructor (also my undergraduate advisor) studied under Mostowski. In addition, the department chair, my compilers professor, my logic and theory of CS professor, and my numerical methods professor were all from Poland---all this in a faculty of fewer than thirty now, and fewer than twenty when I began as a student in 1997. This, along with the composition of the list above, lead me to believe that Poland has not received the reputation it deserves as an intellectual center. This node is an attempt to do my part in correcting this oversight.

1 Most of the information in this writeup comes from http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/ , a site containing, among other things, many biographies of mathematicians.

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