POLISH SOCIETY
BRAVELY DISCOVER POLAND
To bravely discover Poland, meet those who were not afraid to face the challenges. These people have done a lot for the Polish heritage, but what’s more important, they have done a lot for all mankind. These are just some of the Poles who have been bravely discovering.
Nicolaus Copernicus
(1473-1543)
He was a Renaissance astronomer. He was the first European to contend that Sun is the centre of the Solar System, not the Earth.
Maria Skłodowska-Curie
(1867-1934)
She was a physicist-chemist known for her groundbreaking work on radioactivity. She was the first woman to be awarded a Doctor of Science degree and the first woman to be appointed as a professor at the Sorbonne. Skłodowska-Curie is still the only woman to have received two Nobel Prizes and the only scientist in history to have received two Nobel Prizes in two different fields of study (physics in 1903 and chemistry in 1911).
Zbigniew Religa
(1938-2009)
From 2005 to 2007, he served as Minister of Health and was a pioneer in human heart transplantation in Poland. He and his team received the prestigious “Brussels Eureka” award in 2004 at the World Exhibition of Innovation, Research, and Technology for developing an implantable pump for a pneumatic heart assistance system.
Poland is also the country of those who bravely fought for peace in the world and in societies. These people sacrificed themselves so that future generations could bravely discover the world without facing the most significant problems.
Józef Rotblat
(1908-2005)
was a Polish physician, and in 1995 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, of which he was a founding member, for their efforts to combat the study and deployment of nuclear weapons.
Saint John Paul II
(1920-2005)
After 455 years, he became the first non-Italian pope and the first of Slavic heritage. He attempted to encourage dialogue between nations and religions by traveling throughout the world like no other pope had before him. Wojtyła worked tirelessly to destabilize Poland’s communist dictatorship and utilized its global clout to promote human rights around the world.
Lech Wałęsa
(born 1943)
Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who served as the first democratically-elected President of Poland from 1990 to 1995. A shipyard electrician by trade, he became the leader of Solidarity, and led a successful pro-democratic effort which in 1989 ended the communist rule in Poland and ushered in the end of the Cold War.