Marian Mazur

Marian Mazur (born December 7, 1909 in Radom ; † January 21, 1983 in Warsaw ) was a Polish physicist, cyberneticist , author and member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and founder of the Polish School of Cybernetics.

Childhood and time between the world wars

His father, Mikołaj Mazur, worked as a plumber in a PKP workshop in Radom . His mother, Maria Mazur, owned a beauty salon in the same town. He passed his Abitur on VI. Liceum in Radom as top of the class. In 1934 he finished his engineering studies at the Technical University in Warsaw. After completing his studies, he did his year of military service in the Modlin Fortress . He then worked from 1935 to 1939 at the National Telecommunications Institute in Warsaw. This institute was founded and directed by Janusz Groszkowski. There he initially worked in a laboratory for electrical measurements. In addition to the conventional measuring devices that were available, he also developed a workstation to measure the induction of choke coils using direct current. After the laboratory was established, he switched to the automation department, where from 1937 he worked out the theoretical principles and a laboratory model for setting up an automatic telephone connection, with the option of setting up this between Warsaw and Katowice . At the time, this was considered a pioneering achievement worldwide. As part of this work he developed a reliable and fully automatic date display, which was an enormous improvement compared to the semi-automatic date displays available at the time. Before the Second World War he published six scientific articles in the field of electrical engineering. The experience he was able to gain at the National Telecommunications Institute, and the ability to freely choose research topics, had a very strong influence on his later scientific work.

World War II and post-war period

Mazur was a founder of the cybernetic theory of autonomous systems in 1942 , which also includes the cybernetic treatment of the role of humans (psychocybernetics). From 1946 to 1947 he was an inspector for the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and then worked at the Institute of Electrical Engineering in Międzylesie (1948-1967). He was also a professor at the Warsaw University of Technology . Between 1974 and 1979 he worked at the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1977 he became an artificial intelligence research consultant at Rice University in Houston .

His book Cybernetic Theory of Autonomous Systems was published in 1966 and Qualitative Theory of Information in 1970 .

Web links

• http://www.autonom.edu.pl - the site of the supporters of the Polish School of Psychocybernetics and Cybernetics.
• http://www.ien.pw.edu.pl/ET/ - Electrothermal Department of the Warsaw University of Technology.