Famous Polish People - Part 1

Mikolaj Kopernik

Mikołaj Kopernik - Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 - 1543), was a Polish astronomer and mathematician who set out scientifically based theory of a universe with the sun at its centre and that the earth and the moon were shaped round. Before nearly everyone thought that the earth was flat and wheels drove the sun, stars and the moon. 

He was born in Torun, Poland. His father Niklas Koppernigk, was a merchant and baker from Cracow, who migrated to Torun. Mikolaj Kopernik studied astronomy and astrology in the University of Cracow, later canon and civil low in Bologna, Italy and medicine at the University of Padua, where he received a license to practice medicine.

Maria Sklodowska-Curie

Maria Skłodowska - Marie Sklodowska-Curie 

 (1867 - 1934), Polish physicist and chemistwho was unable to get accepted into any Russian universities (Poland was already partitioned) (due to her gender and anti-Polish repercussions of the January Uprising). In the age of 24 Maria moved from Warsaw to Paris where she obtained and conducted her subsequent scientific work. She married Pierre Curie, French physicist.

Maria Sklodowska was a pioneer in field of radioactivity, discvovered polonium and radium and was first female professor at the University of  Paris as well as first person honored with two Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw.

Fryderyk Chopin

Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin - Frederic Francois Chopin (1810 - 1849), was a Polish composer, virtuoso pianist and music teacher of French-Polish parentage. He was born in Zelazowa Wola, Duchy of Warsaw, grew up and completed his musical education in Warsaw and later settled in Paris as part of the Polish Great Emigration.

Chopin composed more than 200 works during his short lifetime. Most of them dedicated to his friends and students.