Science & Literature
What Poland produced. Copernicus and Curie, the mathematicians who broke Enigma, Miłosz and Szymborska, Chopin, and the writers and scientists claimed by two countries at once.
Part of Poland
6 moments in this segment.
- - Birth of Copernicus. February 19, 1473, Toruń. Mikołaj Kopernik. Canon of Frombork Cathedral. His "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" (1543) places the Sun at the centre of the universe, the scientific revolution's founding text.
- - De Revolutionibus Published. 1543. Copernicus publishes "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres", heliocentric model of the solar system. Copy delivered to him on his deathbed, May 24, 1543. The book that began the Scientific Revolution.
- - Frédéric Chopin. 1810-1849. Born in Żelazowa Wola near Warsaw. The greatest pianist-composer of the Romantic era; spent his adult life in Paris exile, composing music that became the international voice of partitioned Poland.
- - Pan Tadeusz Published. 1834. Adam Mickiewicz publishes "Pan Tadeusz" in Paris, the national epic of Poland. "Lithuania, my country! You are as good health..." The defining literary work of Polish Romanticism.
- - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Born. November 7, 1867, Warsaw. Maria Salomea Skłodowska. Discovered polonium (named for Poland) and radium. First woman to win a Nobel Prize; only person to win Nobels in two different sciences (Physics 1903, Chemistry 1911).
- - Sienkiewicz Publishes Quo Vadis. 1896. Henryk Sienkiewicz publishes "Quo Vadis", historical novel of Nero's Rome. Translated into 50+ languages; helped Sienkiewicz win the 1905 Nobel Prize in Literature, Poland's first Nobel.
