Let’s have a thread about all the smart pollacks who have added to this world.
I’ll start.
Marie Curie - A genius radiation researcher
Copernicus - Helped us understand our position in the universe and he was a skilled economist to boot.
Dr. Mark Skalinski is a petrophysicist I work with. He is the quintessential absent minded professor - absolute genius at work but you have to assign a handler with him when he travels so he doesn’t get lost. He also does an awesome rendition of “Wild Thing” when we can coax him onstage.
Probably not the answer you were looking but he is unquestionably smart, 100% Polish, and certainly adds to our world here in Luanda.
Composers and musicians Frederic Chopin and Ignaz Paderowski.
Paderowski was also a diplomat and the Second Prime Minister of Poland (!) Take that, Beethoven!
Astronomer Johan Hevelius, whose real name was Jan Heweliusz. The father of Lunar Topography and the guy who literally wrote the book ( Historiola della stella mira) on the first-observed variable star, effectively naming it “Mira”
there was this guy who sent a rocket to the sun at night so it wouldn’t burn up but i forget his name.
Stanisław Ulam was a codeveloper of the H-Bomb.
a group of mathematicians (included Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki, Henryk Zygalski) cracked the 1932 version of the Enigma machine used by Germany.
Jan Łukasiewicz developed Polish notation.
He’s an inspiration to all English-as-a-second-language students everywhere.
I didn’t peg him as Polish.
Stanislaw Lem, highly-regarded science-fiction author and philosopher.
Lech Walesa: union organizer, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, former president of Poland.
Zbigniew Brzezinski: political scientist, former U.S. National Security Advisor.
If there was ever a topic that demanded a comprehensive leaflet be written about it, this is it.
Russian composers Igor Stravinsky and Dimitri Shostakovich were both of Polish ancestry.
My wife, who improves every life she comes in contact with.
Every time I read the title of this thread, I think of stripper poles with a built-in telephone and wi-fi, so the strippers can check their Facebook pages while going through the motions on stage. That is what a Smart Pole means to me…sort of an iPole?
I just posted about him a few weeks ago, but I think the name Witold Pilecki is well worth repeating.
Setting aside for a moment how much of a stone-cold badass thing it was to get sent to Auschwitz on purpose, he must have been incredibly clever to design the plan and pull it all off.
Perhaps it doesn’t qualify as smart in the traditional academic sense, but it’s certainly an amazing set of accomplishments.
I recently encountered an extendable rod which was placed floor-to-ceiling and had a sign attached giving directions to the bathroom. It was literally branded “Smart Pole”.
I personally know Zbigniew Michalewicz to be fairly clever (and also a douche).
Yes, never confuse insane bravery with stupidity.
If you’ve never seen anything by the brilliant Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski, you’re missing out.
As opposed to Famous Jewish Sports Legends?
Another vote for Stanislaw Lem. I first read The Star Diaries in high school and was very impressed. And even at the time, I realized that the translator had to be brilliant as well. However, he doesn’t seem to be Polish.
(Anyone else think of the thread title as relating to some kind of geographic location?
“Well, son, everyone knows about the North Pole and the South Pole. But there are many lesser-known poles, such as the East Pole, the West Pole, the Pole of Inaccessibility, the Cold Pole, the Smart Pole, and the Dumb Pole…”)
This is going to rock your world. Despite his several brilliant deductions about the German Enigma code – from an initial intuition that the mysterious code groups must be produced by some sort of machine, to the development of a “bombe” computation machine to process solutions rapidly, one of the earliest computer-like devices, Rejewski’s biggest break into understanding and deciphering Enigma was accomplished by pure mathematical reasoning, before he developed the bombe.
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
“The solution”, writes historian David Kahn, “was Rejewski’s own stunning achievement, one that elevates him to the pantheon of the greatest cryptanalysts of all time”.[18] Rejewski used a mathematical theorem that one mathematics professor has since described as “the theorem that won World War II”.[19]
[/QUOTE]
Another author has called Rejeswki’s deduction one of the greatest practical feats of pure mathematics of all time.
He worked on German ciphers and codes all through the war, in many ways. But as a young man, alone, in his head, he broke open the “unbreakable” Enigma cipher using mathematical reasoning, and eventually laid the innermost secrets of Hitler’s empire on the desks of his archenemies.
If we’re taking smart and talented, even if not internationally recognized, and include Polish-American (he speaks Polish, so I count him) I’ll throw in this (occasional) blogger: http://www.idlewords.com/
I think Josef Conrad might envy his writing.
You know, if these guys would just spend as much time pondering more efficient methods of lightbulb replacement as they do inventing modern English literature and discovering rare atomic elements…