Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska

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Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska (born April 25, 1925 in Sokołów Podlaski ; † March 13, 2015 ) was a Polish vertebrate paleontologist, specialist in early mammals.

life and work

Kielan-Jaworowska studied zoology at the University of Warsaw , initially at an underground university during the German occupation in World War II , after she had already attended an underground high school. The regular high schools and universities were closed by the occupiers during this time. During the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 she was a nurse, but was captured and taken to a camp near Warsaw. In 1945/46 she was an assistant at the Zoological Museum in Warsaw and from 1948 to 1952 assistant in the paleontology department of the University of Warsaw. In 1949 she made her diploma in zoology. In 1953 she received her doctorate in paleontology (her teacher was Roman Kozłowski ) and then worked at the Institute of Paleontology of the Polish Academy of Sciences .

In 1957 she received her habilitation . At first she dealt with trilobites from the Ordovician and Devonian Central Europe. From 1958 to 1964 she dealt with the grasping forceps of Paleozoic polychaeta .

From 1956 she was a senior scientist at the Institute of Paleontology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1961 she was director and professor at the University of Warsaw, which she remained until 1982. From 1984 to 1987 she headed the vertebrate paleontology laboratory at the institute. She also taught from 1987 to 1995 as a professor of paleontology at the University of Oslo , at Harvard University (1973/74), the University of Paris VII (and at the Natural History Museum in Paris, 1982 to 1984) and other universities abroad.

From 1963 to 1971 she led a number of Polish-Mongolian expeditions to paleontological excavations in the Gobi desert . The expeditions brought discoveries and new knowledge about mammals and dinosaurs of the Cretaceous Period in Mongolia. Her employees included the dinosaur experts Teresa Maryańska and Halszka Osmólska . She herself was particularly concerned with primitive mammals such as Multituberculata .

1975 to 1987 she was editor of Palaeontologica Polonica and since 1996 of Acta Palaeontologica Polonica .

She was (as the first woman) on the executive committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences and was its vice-president from 1980 to 1989. She was a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences (1967), the Norwegian Academy of Sciences (1989) and the Academia Europaea , as well as the Palaeontological Association and the Norwegian Paleontological Society, of which she was president from 1989 to 1994. She was an honorary member of the Linnean Society , the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, and the Polish Copernicus Society of Naturalists. From 1980 to 1992 she was Vice President of the International Paleontological Association.

In 1974 she received the Polish State Prize for her work on mammals from the Mesozoic Era. In 2005 she received the Polish President's Prize for Scientific Achievement. In 1995 she received the Romer-Simpson Medal of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology , of which she was an honorary member (1975).

Some animal species and groups were named after her, such as Kielanodon, Kielantherium, Zofiabaatar.

She was married to Zbigniew Jaworowski (Professor of Radiation Biology in Warsaw at the Central Laboratory for Radiation Protection) and had a son with him.

Awards and honors

Fonts (selection)

  • Hunting for Dinosaurs , MIT Press 1969
  • with J. Hurum: Phylogeny and systematics of multituberculate mammals . Palaeontology, Vol. 44, 2001, pp. 389-429.
  • with Richard L. Cifelli, Zhe-Xi Luo: Mammals from the age of dinosaurs: origins, evolution, and structure , New York: Columbia University Press 2004
  • with JA Lillegraven, William A. Clemens (editors): Mesozoic Mammals. The First Two-thirds of Mammalian History . University of California Press, Berkeley 99-149.
  • In pursuit of early mammals , Indiana University Press 2013

literature

  • Article in Ogilvie, Harvey (Editor) Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science , Routledge 2000, Volume 1
  • Richard L. Cifelli: Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska (1925-2015). Obituary in: Nature . Volume 520, No. 7546, 2015, p. 158, doi: 10.1038 / 520158a

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Palaeontologica Polonica, Volume 11, 1959, pp. 1-198
  2. ↑ Palaeontologica Polonica, Volume 16, 1966, pp. 1-152
  3. ↑ Kielan-Jaworowska, N. Dovchin: Narrative of the Polish-Mongolian Paleontological Expeditions 1963-1965 . Palaeontologica Polonica, Volume 19, 1969, pp. 7-30, Kielan-Jaworowska, Rinchen Barsbold : Narrative of the Polish-Mongolian Paleontological Expeditions 1967-1971 . Palaeontologica Polonica, Volume 27, 1972, pp. 5-13
  4. ↑ Powstańcze Biogramy - Zofia Kielan. Retrieved September 9, 2019 (Polish).
personal data
SURNAME Kielan-Jaworowska, Zofia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish vertebrate paleontologist, specialist in early mammals
DATE OF BIRTH April 25, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Sokołów Podlaski
DATE OF DEATH March 13, 2015