Józef Wierusz-Kowalski
Józef Wierusz-Kowalski (born March 16, 1866 in Puławy , † November 30, 1927 in Ankara ) was a Polish physicist and diplomat.
Life
Wierusz-Kowalski was the son of a landowner in what was then part of Russia in Poland. He studied physics at the Imperial University in Warsaw and Göttingen and received his doctorate there in 1899 on a study of the strength of glass. He then studied in Berlin, Würzburg (where he was a student of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen ), at the ETH Zurich and in Bern. In 1894 he became professor of mathematics and natural sciences at the University of Friborg . In the same year he presented Pierre and Marie Curie in Pariseach other (Marie Curie was an old friend of his wife). He founded the Faculty of Physics at the University of Friborg and was rector in 1897/98. He stayed at the University of Friborg until 1915. During the First World War he worked for a committee in support of the victims of the war in Poland, which Henryk Sienkiewicz had founded in Vevey . He was also on the editorial board of a Polish encyclopedia published in Switzerland. Then he moved back to Poland, where he taught at the forerunner of what would later become the Free Polish University in Warsaw and he taught at the University of Warsaw , which was reopened in 1915 , where he established a faculty for experimental physics in 1916. After the war he was a co-founder of the Warsaw University of Technology , where he became a professor.
As a physicist, he dealt with lightning, electrical discharges, phosphorescence and luminescence , in particular investigating phosphorescence of rare earths and organic compounds and discovering progressive phosphorescence in organic molecules. For this he received an award from Harvard University in 1912 .
With his assistant Ignacy Mościcki , he developed a process for producing nitrogen using electric arc discharges, and around 1903 they founded a factory for producing nitric acid using this method.
He was an active member of the Warsaw Scientific Society founded in 1907 and was the initiator of the establishment of the Polish Physical Society (1919/20, as Warsaw Physical Society in 1919, as Polish in 1920).
In 1919 he became Polish Ambassador to the Holy See , from 1921 to 1924 in the Netherlands, was then Ambassador to Vienna until 1926 and from October 1926 to Turkey in Ankara, where he died.
literature
- Halina Florkowska-Frančić : Józef Kowalski. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . March 10, 2011 .
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wierusz-Kowalski, Józef |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Polish physicist and diplomat |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 16, 1866 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Puławy |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 30, 1927 |
| Place of death | Ankara |