Greatest Polish contribution(s) to the world ?

Here's an interesting video about Slavic cultural history created by a Polish musician.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr1DSgjhRqE

Very easy on eyes video, lol, but I think you should go out tonight and have some fun.
Thanks to this video I'm never going to look at making butter the same way. :shocked:
 
Thanks, and as a Pole I would love to take a credit for destruction of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, giving people freedoms and rendering Cold War obsolete. :grin:

Yes Poles deserve credit and respect for that. Now that communism and Cold War are over it's time to relax a bit.

Giving some of the credit to "Polish contribution to the world" for the fall of communism have some merits to it. The credit is even more worthy as the big change happened in a fairly peaceful way without a civil war in central europe. To be honest part of the credit should be giving to polish communist/ruling party of 80s and 90s. They were least conservative among all Soviet Block nations, and smart enough to admit failure of socialist economy, introducing privatisation and unilaterally giving up power and chance to democracy.

I didn't know that. I thought Jaruzelski was a hardliner who fiercely fought against Solidarnosc.

Of course, without soviet leader with a very human face like Gorbachev it would have been impossible, as every attempt of system change would ended up with Soviet military intervention.
And the last but not least thanks to the president of US Ronald Reagan who embraced Gorbachev with respect and even as personal friend. If Gorbachev felt threatened in any way or that Russian sovereignty was in doubt, there wouldn't have been any changes to the Soviet Block.

Agree.
 
When it comes to scientific contributions - here is a good book (PDF) in English:

"From alchemy to the present day - the choice of biographies of Polish scientists":

http://uatacz.up.krakow.pl/~wwwchemia/pliki/ISBN_978_83_7271_768_9_From_alchemy_to_the_present_day

But this book doesn't mention some prominent inventors such as for example these guys:

Jan Szczepanik: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Szczepanik

Karol Pollak: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karol_Pollak

Kazimierz Żegleń: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_Zeglen

Julian Ochorowicz: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Ochorowicz

Jan Czochralski: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Czochralski

Stefan Bryła: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Bryła

Rudolf Gundlach: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Gundlach

Jacek Karpiński: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacek_Karpiński

Kazimierz Prószyński: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_Prószyński

More recently (21st century) also Lucjan Łągiewka, his EPAR technology and other inventions (Google it).

Julian Leopold Ochorowicz was one of the most important pioneers of computers and television, in 1877 he formulated some epoch-making laws related to transmission of monochromatic motion pictures at long distances which were and still are indispensible during the process of producing computers and TV sets.

Jan Szczepanik had dozens of inventions, including important ones (at least 50 inventions and at least 92 patents - 30 British, 22 German, 21 Austrian, 15 American and 4 Polish) and several hundreds of different technical solutions, pioneer of television, pioneer of film and photography - he invented colorful movie and colorful photography, he had outstanding achievements in improving weaving technologies and weaving machinery, his another invention, bulletproof material, turned out to be efficient and saved the life of Spanish king Alfonso XIII.According to Albert Abramson, "Electronic Motion Pictures. A history of the Television Camera", published in 1955 - Jan Szczepanik is among the first three most important pioneers of television.

The book also doesn't mention great mathematician Stefan Banach:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Banach

Another great Polish mathematician and logician was Alfred Tarski:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Tarski

And already mentioned Rejewski + Różycki + Zygalski "Enigma trio".

As well as Władysław Hugo Dionizy Steinhaus (Polish-Jewish):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Steinhaus

Continuing with mathematicians - Kazimierz Kuratowski:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_Kuratowski

Stanisław Marcin Ulam - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaw_Ulam

Tadeusz Banachiewicz - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadeusz_Banachiewicz

Jacek Karpiński - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacek_Karpiński

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_Ajdukiewicz

In general, the entire "Lwów school of mathematics":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lwów_School_of_Mathematics

========================

Ignacy Łukasiewicz is mentioned in that book - he invented the way to refine kerosene from crude oil (1852), his invention of a kerosene lamp (1853) is considered as the starting point of modern oil industry, he built the first oil well (1854) and the first oil refinery (1856).
 
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Some of important figures from Polish literature:

Jerzy Andrzejewski - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Andrzejewski
Jan Kochanowski - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Kochanowski
Zygmunt Krasiński - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zygmunt_Krasiński
Adam Mickiewicz - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Mickiewicz
Mikołaj Rej - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikołaj_Rej
Władysław Reymont - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Władysław_Reymont
Bruno Schulz - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Schulz
Henryk Sienkiewicz - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henryk_Sienkiewicz
Juliusz Słowacki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliusz_Słowacki
Stanisław Wyspiański - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisław_Wyspiański
Stefan Żeromski - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Żeromski
Witold Gombrowicz - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Gombrowicz
Stanisław Przybyszewski - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisław_Przybyszewski
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Apollinaire
Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad
Adam Gdacjusz - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Gdacjusz
Stanisław Lem - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisław_Lem
Andrzej Sapkowski - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrzej_Sapkowski

===========================

Old Poland's political thought - especially all republican and democratic ideas of the 16th century - influenced also Western Europe.

For example:

Wawrzyniec Grzymała Goślicki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wawrzyniec_Grzymała_Goślicki

"The Accomplished Senator" was translated to English and influenced - among others - Thomas Jefferson, who had it in his library:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_optimo_senatore

381px-Counsellor_Goslicki.jpg


==========================

Kazimierz Siemienowicz (Polish-Lithuanian pioneer of rocketry): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_Siemienowicz

More about Siemienowicz from NASA website, "Rockets History":

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/153410main_Rockets_History.pdf

Kazimierz Siemienowicz, c. 1600 to c. 1651

Kazimierz Siemienowicz, a Polish-Lithuanian commander in the Polish Royal Artillery, was an expert in the fields of artillery and rocketry. He wrote a manuscript on rocketry that was partially published before his death. In Artis Magnae Artilleriae pars prima, he published a design for multistage rockets that was to become a fundamental rocket technology for rockets heading for outer space. Siemienowicz also proposed batteries for military rocket launching and delta-wing stabilizers to replace the guiding rods currently in use with military rockets.

But he is mentioned in the PDF book that I linked before.

After Siemienowicz there was also Ciołkowski, but he was a Russian citizen - info from the same NASA paper:

Konstantin E. Tsiolkovski, 1857 to 1935
Konstantin Tsiolkovski was a teacher, theorist, and astronautics pioneer. Son of a Polish forester who emigrated to Russia, he wrote and taught extensively about human space travel and is considered the father of cosmonautics and human spaceflight.

Józef Struś (16th century): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_Struthius

From wikipedia about Józef Struś:

"(...) His conceptual approach to measurement of the pulse is regarded as pioneering and revolutionary.[1][2] In Sphygmicae artis iam mille ducentos annos perditae et desideratae libri V. (first published 1540 in Basel, but only copies from 1555 are accessible) he described five types of pulses, the diagnostic meaning of those types, and the influence of body temperature and nervous system on pulse. It contains probably the earliest graphic presentation of the pulse. (...)"

http://www.dbc.wroc.pl/dlibra/doccontent?id=3215&from=FBC

==========================

Oh, and Poles invented vodka (either Poles or Russians, but more likely Poles).
 
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Discoverers of first extrasolar planets were Polish:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksander_Wolszczan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohdan_Paczyński

Leopold Infeld, a Polish-Jewish physicist who worked with two German-Jewish physicists - Albert Einstein and Max Born:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Infeld

Railways, tunnels & bridges in South America: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Malinowski

Poland is the worldwide larger exporter of apples (2nd is China):

http://www.thenews.pl/1/6/Artykul/155672,Prof-Pieniazek-apple-of-the-eye-of-Polish-pomology

http://www.pieniazek.com/English/HTML/Frames/PieniazekAnecdotes.htm

Esperanto language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._L._Zamenhof

(2a) Yet Poles often claim the idea of religios tolerance as their achievment, but in fact the tolerance had been born in multi-reliogious society of then Lithuania (approx. modern Lithuania and Belarus), while original Poland was predominantly Catholic and not more tolerant than Germany at that time.

Well, this is wrong. First of all tolerance was introduced by the Warsaw Confederation of 1573 - so it took place in Poland.

Secondly Lithuania was no more religiously diversified than Poland (Lithuania included Belarus but Poland included Prussia and Ukraine).

Maps of religious diversity in the 16th - early 17th centuries:

Religions2.png


Religions.png


So in Poland there were (of course Roman Catholicism was the main religion, both in Poland and in Lithuania):

Roman Catholics
Orthodox Christians
Uniates (Greek Catholics)
Jews / Judaism
Lutherans
Calvinists
The Polish Brethren
The Czech Brethren
Armenian Christians
Mennonites
Muslims
etc., etc.

In Lithuania during the 16th century religious diversity was actually slightly smaller than in Poland.



 
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But the most reliable data on religious structure of the PLC is here (they counted literally every temple):

However, it refers to the second half of the 18th century (not to the late 16th century):

"From the Studies on the Religious and Confessional Map of the PLC before the 1st Partition of 1772":

"
Geography of Religious and Denominational Structures in the Crown of Polish Kingdom in the 2nd half of the 18th century":

https://www.academia.edu/6466617/Ge...i_wyznaniowych_w_Koronie_w_II_połowie_XVIII_w

The same in a PDF file:

https://www.kul.pl/files/845/pdf/szady_geografia_struktur_2010.pdf

http://www.google.pl/url?sa=t&rct=j...=LtEqnZ_MvOIDC_-DvE6mcg&bvm=bv.88528373,d.d2s

Here is the author's website (Bogumił Szady):

http://www.kul.pl/bogumil-szady-ph-d,art_48224.html

Online maps showing locations of temples of various religions in Poland in the late 18th century:

http://hgis.kul.lublin.pl/azm/pmapper-4.2.0/map_default.phtml?language=en
 
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It would be interesting if someone could explain why some languages go toward simplicity like English, and some go into extreme complexity like Polish?

It's all a matter of point of view. Polish cases make it complicated, but the lack of articles makes it easy to form basic phrases. Spelling seems complicated but the rules are straight, and therefore reading Polish is easier than reading English. Pronunciation is a bummer though...
As for English being simple, it is probably because you are fluent. English is very flexible, which is both a blessing and a curse (who hasn't read a phrase, knowing all the single words, and unable to make sense of it?), and the learning process can be challenging (opposition short/long vowels, sounds with several spellings, irregular verbs...)....

Yes, this is correct. All natural languages have quirks. English spelling is very irregular, but its case system is quite simple and regular. Most verbs have only a few main forms (e.g. sing, sings, sang, sung, singing), and the rest of the tenses are made by using one of those and combining them with auxiliary verbs that don't change. Slavic languages typically have a huge boatload of conjugations to memorize, but their spelling systems are mostly regular, at least much more so than English.
 
Yes, this is correct. All natural languages have quirks. English spelling is very irregular, but its case system is quite simple and regular. Most verbs have only a few main forms (e.g. sing, sings, sang, sung, singing), and the rest of the tenses are made by using one of those and combining them with auxiliary verbs that don't change. Slavic languages typically have a huge boatload of conjugations to memorize, but their spelling systems are mostly regular, at least much more so than English.
I'm not sure, but it seems that polish spelling is updated regularly, as soon as new/mutated word becomes most popular changes in spelling follow. English spelling seems to be very conservative, chiseled in stone, sort to speak.

My question was more about grammar than orthography.
It might be the case that English came to existence by way of fusion of other languages, therefore was a second language for most local population of England. Second languages always go through simplification in mouths of none native speakers. One might say that English was always a language of immigrants, and therefore perfect for the whole world.

Here are my sort of investigation into the subject:
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/26890-Is-complexity-of-grammar-pointing-to-roots-of-a-language
 
35782_funny_polandball_world_map.jpg


I think, Polandball is great contribution for popular culture . Thanks to Poles
 
Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was the first parliamentary monarchy in Europe, most likely in the world too, from 1569.
Kings were elected,

No, kings were elected since 1370.
First "election" was made in 1177.
Since 1573 it was full democratic election but the rules was made earlier.
Earlier choice was making by small group of people.
Parlamentary monarchy begin about 1493/1505.


acting more like presidents than sovereign rulers.

Yea! something like that. It was a life-time president.
And even not as president in presidential system, but like in parlamentary system.

Number 2 (nobility-limited democracy) is a kind of oligarchy and I don't see how it is a contribution to the outside world anyway.

No, it wasn't limited democracy!
Every member of nation could vote - elect reprezentatives to parlament and elect the king.
Did British had something like that in times of Tudors or before? I deeply dout.

But you must remember that nation = nobles.
Others inhabitants weren't from the same nation,
and weren't the citizens of the polish countries.

So, it was 100% democracy. Unfortunately.

Thanks, and as a Pole

O! It seems to explain many things... :unsure:

More recently (21st century) also Lucjan Łągiewka, his EPAR technology and other inventions (Google it).

Yea, this is the cool guy!
Something like polish Tesla.
 
Did someone mention about:

- Ludwik von Mises and his works?
- Zbigniew Brzeziński and his politics?

- Dawid Grun (alias David ben Gurion) - first prime minister of State of Israel and one of founder of this state
- Mieczysław Bieguń (aka Menachem Begun) similar as above
- Szymon Perski (vel Shimon Peres) - another who get Peace Nobel Price as Biegun...
- Izaak Jeziernicki (Itzhak Shamir)?
 
Hilary Koprowski, a naturalized American Polish Jew, may have spread AIDS in Africa

Aids could be traced to the time when Prof Hilary Koprowski, and Dr Stanley Plotkin, developed an oral polio vaccine called CHAT.

http://www.congoforum.be/en/congodetail.asp?subitem=40&id=146682&Congofiche=selected

Koprowski's vaccine was given to large numbers of children, some of whom were less than 30 days old

Polio Vaccines and the Origin of AIDS - The Career of a Threatening Idea
by Brian Martin, Ph.D.


http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/supressed_inventions/suppressed_inventions07.htm
 
Ary Szternfeld and his works!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ary_Abramovich_Sternfeld

Konstanty Ciołkowski

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky

Kazimierz Siemienowicz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_Siemienowicz

For over two centuries this work was used in Europe as a basic artillery manual.[24] Its pyrotechnic formulations were used for over a century.[25] The book provided the standard designs for creating rockets, fireballs, and other pyrotechnic devices. It discussed for the first time the idea of applying a reactive technique to artillery. It contains a large chapter on caliber, construction, production and properties of rockets (for both military and civil purposes), including multistage rockets, batteries of rockets, and rockets with delta wing stabilizers (instead of the common guiding rods).


I don't know, did someone mention Józef Teodor Konrad Nałęcz-Korzeniowski known as Joseph Conrad?
 
A different kind of contribution

Poland has the largest Bison herd in the world. I had occasion to speak to the Principle Chief of several Native American tribes. They all tell the same story of their honored ancient old ones. The legend is the First Natives that settled in Alaska and Canada, some 12,000 years ago, followed the track of the Bison (not Buffalo) back and forth between Europe and Russia and across the Beringa Bridge several times before the honored ones did not return to Europe.

It is from this group of First Americans that settled on the Great Lakes that the Native Americans of the Midwest United States descend. I believe the Polish people should be thanked for the good care they gave and continue to give their animals.
 
Poland has the largest Bison herd in the world. I had occasion to speak to the Principle Chief of several Native American tribes. They all tell the same story of their honored ancient old ones. The legend is the First Natives that settled in Alaska and Canada, some 12,000 years ago, followed the track of the Bison (not Buffalo) back and forth between Europe and Russia and across the Beringa Bridge several times before the honored ones did not return to Europe.

It is from this group of First Americans that settled on the Great Lakes that the Native Americans of the Midwest United States descend. I believe the Polish people should be thanked for the good care they gave and continue to give their animals.
Wiki article says that both European and American bison existed on both continents for at least 250 thousand years.
However, Y chromosome analysis associated wisent and American bison.[9] An earlier study using amplified fragment length polymorphism fingerprinting showed a close association of wisent with American bison, and probably with the yak, but noted that the interbreeding of Bovini species made determining relationships problematic.[10]
The steppe bison (B. priscus) diverged from the lineage that led to cattle (Bos taurus) about 2 to 5 million years ago. The Bison genus is clearly in the fossil record by 2 million years ago.[11] The steppe bison spread across Eurasia and was the bison pictured in the ancient cave drawings of Spain and Southern France.
The European bison or wisent arose from the steppe bison. Without fossil evidence of other ancestral species between the steppe bison and the European bison, though the European bison might have arisen from the lineage that led to American bison if that lineage backcrossed with the steppe bison. Again, the web of relationships is confusing, but some evidence shows that the European bison is descended from bison that had migrated from Asia to North America, and then back to Europe, where they crossbred with existing steppe bison.[11]
At one point, some steppe bison crossbred with the ancestors of the modern yak. After that crossbreeding, a population of steppe bison crossed the Bering Land Bridge to North America. Evidence exists of multiple crossings of bison to and from Asia starting before 500,000 years ago and continuing until at least 220,000 years ago. The steppe bison spread through the northern parts of North America and lived in Eurasia until around 11,000 years ago[12] and North America until 4,000 to 8,000 years ago.[11]

Skulls of European bison (left) and American bison (right)​

Bison latifrons (the "giant" or "longhorn" bison) is thought to have evolved in midcontinent North America from B. priscus, after the steppe bison crossed into North America.[13][14][15] Giant bison (B. latifrons) appeared in the fossil record about 500,000 years ago.[11] B. latifrons was one of many species of North American megafauna that became extinct during the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene epoch (an event referred to as the Quaternary extinction event). It is thought to have disappeared some 21,000–30,000 years ago, during the late Wisconsin glaciation.[16]
B. latifrons was replaced by the smaller B. antiquus, which appeared in the North American fossil record around 250,000 years ago.[17] B. antiquus, in turn, evolved into B. occidentalis, then into the yet smaller B. bison, the modern American bison, some 5,000 to 10,000 years ago.[18][19] Some researchers consider B. occidentalis to be a subspecies of B. antiquus.[20]
During the population bottleneck, after the great slaughter of American bison during the 19th century, the number of bison remaining alive in North America declined to as low as 541. During that period, a handful of ranchers gathered remnants of the existing herds to save the species from extinction. These ranchers bred some of the bison with cattle in an effort to produce "cattleo"[21] (today called "beefalo") Accidental crossings were also known to occur. Generally, male domestic bulls were crossed with buffalo cows, producing offspring of which only the females were fertile. The crossbred animals did not demonstrate any form of hybrid vigor, so the practice was abandoned. The proportion of cattle DNA that has been measured in introgressed individuals and bison herds today is typically quite low, ranging from 0.56 to 1.8%.[21][22] In the United States, many ranchers are now using DNA testing to cull the residual cattle genetics from their bison herds. The U.S. National Bison Association has adopted a code of ethics that prohibits its members from deliberately crossbreeding bison with any other species.
Some cattle breeds are intentionally bred with bison to produce, for instance, beefalo hybrids. Wisent-American bison hybrids were briefly experimented with in Germany (and found to be fully fertile) and a herd of such animals is maintained in Russia. A herd of cattle-wisent crossbreeds (zubron) is maintained in Poland. First-generation crosses do not occur naturally, requiring caesarean delivery. First-generation males are infertile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bison
 
Thank you for the information. I don't have much faith in Wiki due to the number of uncorrected errors I know about, but I digress. I based my reply on what I was told by the Principal Chiefs I spoke with.

I am not dismissing what you wrote. It is not insignificant by any means, but I would like a source that is a little more reliable. .
 

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