Stefan Zbigniew Różycki

Stefan Zbigniew Różycki, geologist, geographer, and traveller, was born on 8 January 1906, in Konstantynówka, near Donetsk. He spent his childhood and early adolescence in Ukraine and later he continued education in gymnasiums in Warsaw and in Częstochowa. After obtaining his school-leaving certificate in 1925 he began geologic and geographic studies at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Warsaw. In 1931 he obtained the title of a Doctor of Philosophy in geology and physical geography on the basis of his thesis The Żoliborz 's Interglacial. In 1934 he participated in the Polish expedition to Spitsbergen. In 1939 he took part in the Battle of Modlin Fortress and during the occupation period he engaged in conspiratiorial activities in the Geographic Service at the Supreme Command of the Home Army (AK): he devised military maps, together with a group of architects he prepared the future plans of Warsaw development, and he participated in securement of the scientific geologic collection. After the war (1945-1946) he ran the Study of Town-planning Physiography at the Capital City Reconstruction Bureau. In 1945 he obtained habilitation at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the University of Warsaw on the basis of his dissertation The Bathonian, Callovian, and Oxfordian stage of the Kraków-Częstochowa Jurassic Highland Chain. He was the first post-war Director of the Department of Geography. In 1946 he was promoted an associated professor and until 1951 he was the Director of the Section of Physical Geography. In 1948- 1951 he was also a Deputy Dean and in 1949- 1950 an Associated Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. In 1951 the Council of Ministers assigned him to organize the Faculty of Geology at the University of Warsaw, and after that, in 1952, he brought into existence the Section of the Quaternary Period Geology (the first in the world) which he ran until 1968. In 1953-1954 he was the Director of the Institute of Geology at the Geological Survey. In 1954 he was promoted for a full professor and since that year he ran the Quaternary Geology Study at the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1955- 1959 he presided the Expedition Commission in the framework of the International Geophysical Year. He was both the organizer and a participant of many Polish scientific expeditions, among others to Spitsbergen (1958), to Vietnam and China (1956, 1965), to Antarctica (1958/1959), to India (1967), and to Sahara (1970). He was the editor-in-chief of the periodicals „Quaternary Studies in Poland” and „Studia Geologica Polonica”. He was a member of many Polish and many foreign scientific organizations and associations: among others he was a full member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the first President and a Honorary President of the Committee on Quaternary Studies, a honorary member of the Committee on Polar Research, of the Polish Geologic Society, of the Polish Geographic Society, and of the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA). He was also the President of the Polish Scientific Film Association. As a geologist he made a contribution to the Jurassic and Cretaceous deposits research; he is acknowledged to be the creator of the Polish school of the quaternary geology. In the field of geography he contributed mostly as a geomorphologist and a polar explorer. He tutored nearly 200 master's thesis and 26 doctor's dissertations and was the author of over 250 papers and many archival studies. For his scientific, didactic, and organizational output he was honoured with, among others, the National Award of I and II degree, the Commander's Cross with Star Polonia Restituta, the Nicolaus Copernicus Medal of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Stefan Zbigniew Różycki died on 16 September 1988, in Warsaw