Poles Distinguished in Space Research

We present here short achievement records of people of Polish nationality or descent who made contributions to space exploration, mainly those mentioned on other pages of our Club. Polish astronauts and cosmonauts are not included in this page - they are listed on a separate page "Poles in space

." Also separately we provide a general, international list of "Great Contributors to Space Exploration." Some especially distinguished Poles (e.g., Nicolaus Copernicus) were placed on both lists. Links marked with the

icon lead to more extensive biographies occupying separate pages, while the others - to short biographical notes placed on this page.

The information provided here is limited, in most part, to achievements concerned with space exploration. We omitted most of the biographical details not pertaining to this subject area.

URANOS

Contents

Biographies

POLAND

Banachiewicz, Tadeusz

Bekker, Mieczyslaw G.

Copernicus, Nicolaus

Hevelius, Johannes

Siemienowicz, Kazimierz

Szternfeld, Ary J.

Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin E.

Ulam, Stanislaw M.

Wolszczan, Aleksander

Ary J. Szternfeld (1905-1980)
Polish-Soviet mechanical engineer and scientist of Jewish origin. Studied at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow (1923-1924) and in France (1924-1932), and after 1935 lived in USSR. He was the author of a fundamental book "Introduction to cosmonautics" (first written in French in Lodz, Poland during the years 1932-1933, and published in USSR in 1937, with 2nd ed. in 1974), and many other books and papers in the field of astronautics. He was a specialist on spaceship trajectories, theory of multistage rockets and atmospheric flight. In 1929 he became, for some time, a member of the German Society for Space Travel (VfR - Verein für Raumschiffahrt), which included as members also Hermann Oberth and Wehrner von Braun. While in France, he collaborated with Robert Esnault-Pelterie, among others, in the work on Esnault-Pelterie's book "L'Astronautique Complément" ("Astronautics - Supplement"), which included several concepts and derivations of Szternfeld. He also received the "REP-Hirsch" Astronautical Award in 1934.
A large crater (100 km diameter) on the back side of the Moon

is named after Szternfeld

.
[More extensive biography is in preparation; see also a biography by W. Geisler "Ary Szternfeld - pionier kosmonautyki" ("Ary Szternfeld - pioneer of cosmonautics"), LSW, Warsaw 1981.]

[ZK]

Stanislaw M. Ulam (1909-1984)
Polish-American mathematician of Jewish origin, from the so-called "Lvov School" of Polish mathematicians (he was a pupil and collaborator of Stefan Banach), from 1935 in the U.S.A. He worked with the "Manhattan Project", where he solved the fundamental problem of hydrogen ignition in the hydrogen bomb and originated the so-called "Monte Carlo" method of numerical computations. He authored many papers and books in various fields of mathematics, and (with J.C. Everett) originated the idea called the "Orion Project" - of a long-range space ship propelled by atomic bomb explosions.
[More extensive biography is in preparation; see also his detailed biography as a mathematician, and his autobiography "Adventures of a Mathematician", University of California Press, Los Angeles 1991.]

[ZK]

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