Zygmunt Wróblewski

Zygmunt Wróblewski

Zygmunt Florenty Wróblewski (born October 28, 1845 in Grodno , Russian Empire , today Belarus ; † April 16, 1888 in Krakow , Austria-Hungary ) was a Polish chemist and physicist . Wróblewski is best known because he and Karol Olszewski succeeded in liquefying air for the first time in 1883 .

After finishing school in Grodno , Zygmunt Wróblewski, son of a lawyer, enrolled at the University of Kiev . At the age of 18 he interrupted his studies to take part in the Polish January uprising in 1863 . He was captured in July of that year. He was initially imprisoned in Siberia and later brought to the Kazan area . During the six years of imprisonment, his eyesight deteriorated and he was threatened with going blind. After his pardon, he traveled to an ophthalmologist in Berlin and after two operations his eyesight was saved.

He then studied in Germany , first in Berlin, later in Heidelberg with Hermann von Helmholtz , who held the chair of physiology there. He had a very good acoustic memory , which he used to expand his knowledge. During his imprisonment, he had proposed a number of theories while reading treatises on physics. Helmholtz advised him to check these theories, which is why he was looking for a position as assistant in a test laboratory, which he finally found in 1872 at the University of Munich . In 1874 he wrote his doctoral thesis there. He then moved to the University of Strasbourg , where he worked with Professor August Kundt , one of Germany's leading experimental physicists. He wrote his habilitation thesis in Strasbourg in 1876 .

In 1880 he went to Paris to study with Henri Etienne Sainte-Claire Deville on a scholarship from the Cracow Academy of Sciences . He managed to gain entry to the laboratory of the École normal supérieure and meet Louis Cailletet . There he improved the procedures used by Cailletet. In 1882 Wróblewski took over a chair at the University of Cracow . There he worked with Karol Olszewski , who in turn had experience in the liquefaction of gases. On March 29, 1883 - according to other sources on April 9 - the two succeeded for the first time in the static liquefaction of oxygen in the air . So far, oxygen, nitrogen , methane , hydrogen and carbon monoxide had resisted liquefaction. In the period that followed, there were discussions as to whether Cailletet or Olszewski and Wróblewski had made the greater contribution to the first-time liquefaction of air, as the latter had benefited greatly from Cailletet's experience.

On April 19, 1888, while Wróblewski was researching the physical properties of hydrogen, a momentous accident occurred when Wróblewski accidentally knocked over a kerosene lamp and died as a result of the burns. In memory of Wróblewski, a moon crater was named after him.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} University at Buffalo: Poland in the Classroom - Zygmunt Wróblewski ( Memento from August 27, 2012 on WebCite )
2. ↑ ^{a b} Klaus Beneke: Karol Stanislaw Olszewski and the history of the liquefaction of gases (PDF; 744 kB)

Web links

Commons : Zygmunt Wróblewski  - collection of images, videos and audio files