Abstract
The Nencki Institute in Warsaw was founded in 1918 to honor one of Poland’s most distinguished biochemists, Marceli Nencki. Since its inception, the institute has evolved from a confederation of privately supported laboratories to a center of research productivity intimately associated with the Polish Academy of Sciences. Early relations with Pavlov’s laboratory laid the foundation for the emergence of a Polish School of Neurophysiology under the leadership of Jersy Konorski. The impact of Konorski and his colleagues has transformed the interpretation of conditioning to include a systematic physiologic basis that more adequately considers the psychology of learning processes. The prestige of the Nencki Institute within contemporary Eastern European and Soviet science was achieved despite the economic pressures on a new nation and its total devastation of World War II. Moreover, the more than 60 years of scientific work in an independent Poland have provided a critical transition between Eastern and Western research efforts, and the Nencki Institute has filled a leading role in facilitating communication among scientists.
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Nencki’s ties to Poland are evident by his election to many Polish scientific societies. He was a member (1875) and honorary member (1887) of the Warsaw Society of Physicians, a member of the Poznan Scientific Society (1891), and of the Warsaw Society of Pharmacy (1893), and an honorary member of the Lublin Society of Physicians (1893), of the Wilno Society of Physicians (1897), of the Krakow Society of Physicians (1897), and of the Austrian Society of Galician Physicians in Lwow (1892). From 1894, he was also an associate member of the Academy of Learning in Krakow. A summary of Nencki’s life and his works may be found in Szwejcerowa and Groszynska 1956.
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Brennan, J.F., Zieliński, K. Science in Poland. Pav. J. Biol. Sci. 16, 118–123 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03001853
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03001853