Mieczysław Wolfke was an important figure of Polish science representing an extremely valuable approach to the role of a scientist in a modern state. The aim of the year dedicated to the memory of this physicist should be not so much to celebrate his achievements, but rather to inspire them to the future of European science and economy. Let the following six values: wideness, openness, logic, functionality, knowledgeability and effectiveness, the first letters of which form the name of Mieczysław Wolfke, become his testament, which we will instill in European society.
Wideness
Like no other field of science, Physics gives the wideness of horizons, skills, and competencies. For centuries, nature and attempts to understand its laws inspired philosophers, mathematicians, and theologians to search for truth. They built models of reality in order to be able to predict the behavior of matter, understand the surrounding world or reconcile ideas with the observed reality. Even today, a physicist is a man who can apply the scientific method to a reliable assessment, and often also to solve problems in the field of biology, medicine, psychology, or many areas of technology developed thanks to scientific discoveries.
The wideness of horizons is also a feature that characterizes Mieczysław Wolfke. His scientific achievements, significant for the history of science and technology, concerning optics and quantum physics, low-temperature research, rocket technology, and defense technologies. Already in his youth, he patented a device for transmitting images at a distance using radio waves, and as an adult, a new type of light source for street lighting.
The wideness of applications is an asset for today’s innovative economy, where opportunities and risks are prevalent. It is the ability to find oneself in entirely new situations, to face unprecedented problems. It is an effective solution to them, which distinguishes successful people and increases innovative potential.
Openess
When Mieczysław Wolfke, appointed professor of the Warsaw University of Technology, came to Warsaw from Zurich in 1922, what shocked Polish collaborators the most was his openness to other people and new ideas. Indeed, only an open mind can see its mistakes in reasoning, be inspired by the achievements of others, get rid of prejudices, and break stereotypes. These qualities, as well as a bit of courage, are crucial to creating innovation.
Openness is also the ability to work with anyone, regardless of nationality, religion, or belief. In today’s dynamic global world, ideas are born both close, in our country or culture, and far away. An open scientist is a man who can argue with anyone, and the only arguments he uses are the compatibility of theory with experience.
Openness is like a lung for an innovative and competitive economy. Without it, creativity suffocates with the limits of intolerance, isolationism, and distrust. Openness breeds respect, which is essential for a meaningful, creative discussion. In the discussion, the most beautiful ideas emerge and form the most credible theories.
Logic
Logic is the ability to conclude from facts. It is the courage to deny what is not anchored in them. Logic is a fundamental attitude in knowledge societies. Especially in the age of easy spread of conspiracy theories and anti-scientific movements, logic guarantees to find the truth and defense against manipulation.
In physics, logic is a way of thinking and planning work. Wolfke has always required logical and, consequently, creative thinking from his students and co-workers. His ability to combine and analyze available facts and inferences allowed him to warn the world in May 1939 against the consequences of discovering the possibility of nuclear fission. Moreover, these skills were crucial to all his discoveries, often so bold that they found experimental confirmation only after several decades.
An innovative economy must be a strong logic behind actions, decisions, and analyzes. Modern society is made up of people who think and act logically. Logic is the foundation on which the future of the world should be built anew every day.
Functionality
Mieczysław Wolfke was an ardent advocate of education in the field of technical physics. It concerned industry or defense that he assessed the value of discoveries and inventions. Despite his achievements in basic sciences, he noticed that the most valuable are functional results concerning the needs of the state and the economy. They create national potential, which may translate into the security of the country and its citizens and the competitiveness of industry, resulting in increased prosperity.
Functionality is the ability of an invention, discovery, device to meet specific needs. First of all, it is the ability to ask about these needs and confront research directions and goals. Science is so fascinating because it is motivated by the curiosity of the researcher. However, absolute joy and satisfaction come from using the achieved results to improve the quality of life of societies. In other words, operational research contributes to the progress of civilization.
Functional technical and basic science is an inexhaustible source of ideas for an innovative economy. Although usually only a small part of ideas turns into working inventions, and a small part of inventions find their way to practical implementation, thanks to them, our life changes beyond recognition from decade to decade. However, it is possible only if we ask ourselves not only the questions: “why?”, but also: “what for?”.
Knowledge
A person with knowledgeability can go out of a scheme and forge a new path. Knowledgeability is wisdom, as evidenced by the possession of knowledge. Similarly to creativity, such a trait cannot only be learned. It can be developed by removing what binds it. Habits, credulity, shyness - these and other demons - suppress creativity in man, introducing his thinking to a safe and well-established track. An innovative economy requires a knowledgeable society. Civilization condemnation, both in technology and in social life, is based on creative ideas and actions.
From childhood, Wolfke was characterized by extraordinary creativity. His “crazy” ideas from his childhood, such as a (planned and prepared) jump from the walls of Jasna Góra in Częstochowa to confess love or “borrowing” electricity from street lighting for technical experiments (which ended in a dark night throughout the city) prove unconventional and courageous. In his adult life, he managed to preserve a part of this childhood madness, as evidenced by defense techniques that were seriously studied in his laboratories just before the outbreak of World War II, such as light telephony, night vision, or cruise missiles. All these cases were based on the knowledgeability of his worldview and activity.
Undoubtedly, knowledgeability is the driving force of an innovative economy. New ideas based on reliable knowledge allow us to stay ahead of the competition, optimize products, and introduce new, practical solutions. Unleashing students’ natural creativity should be one of the essential educational programs in schools and universities. It will bear fruit in the quality of human resources and, as a result, in the industry’s competitiveness.
Efficiency
Efficiency is about being focused on the benefits that the action will bring and being able to measure, track, and quantify these benefits. Through this approach, the outcomes of initiatives create potential and define the context in which it can best be implemented and allow the user experience to be used in future work. In other words, they allow us to consciously use the strengths of successes, effectively limit the sources of failure, and rationally use our time and resources.
Wolfke has always dreamed of the freedom to plan research without considering the cost. Unfortunately, a reality made optimizing expenses and hardware resources a condition for effective and efficient work. Nevertheless, the number of his scientific successes is impressive. The key to this was well-thought-out work organization, conscientiously kept notes as a source of experience, and carefully selected colleagues with complementary skills. The assessment of work efficiency and the potential to achieve results became critical for starting the research.
Work efficiency is also an essential element of a competitive economy. Combined with the innovation of development research, it allows for an objective assessment of opportunities and risks, and as a result, ambitious but conscious setting of strategic goals. Practical work is work worth its cost and results.
In May 2022, seventy-five years will have passed since the death of the outstanding Polish physicist - Mieczysław Wolfke. It is also the hundredth anniversary of the appointment by Józef Piłsudski of this recognized scientist and organizer of technical physics as a professor at the Warsaw University of Technology. The appointment of Mieczysław Władysław Wolfke as the patron of year 2022 is an excellent way to emphasize his merits for Polish and world science and at the same time opportunity to disseminate in society the values that guided him in his life, research, and organizational activities: creativity, versatility, openness, practicality, and inquisitiveness. It is also a chance to promote contemporary Polish achievements in the fields of knowledge with which Wolfke was associated: optics, low-temperature physics, technology, defense, and inventiveness. It is favored by last year’s 100th anniversary of Wolfke’s pioneering work on holography (1920) and this year’s 50th anniversary of the Nobel Prize for Holography for Dennis Gabor (1971). By accepting this, he accepted the award admitted that Wolfke had achieved the same results before him.
Mieczysław Władysław Wolfke was born on May 29, 1883 in Łask (Poland under Russian occupation). He has been interested in science since he was a child. At the age of twelve, he wrote a dissertation on the “planetostat” in which he correctly presented the laws governing space travel. A few years later, in Częstochowa, he began working on transmitting images at a distance using electromagnetic waves - the result was the development of a wire-less telectroscope, patented in Russia (Częstochowa was then under Russian rule), i.e., a device for wireless image transmission.
In the following years of his life, Mieczysław Wolfke attended universities in Liege, Paris, and Wrocław (then in Germany), where he developed his skills in physics and optics. In 1910, at the University of Wrocław, he obtained a doctoral degree from prof. Otto Lummer. Together with Karol Ritzmann, he also developed a new model of a cadmium-mercury lamp, patented in Germany, Switzerland, France, and Great Britain.
After obtaining his doctorate, he was employed at the Carl Zeiss Stiftung in Jena. In 1912 he went to Karlsruhe, where for four months, he was an assistant to prof. Otto Lehmann at the Department of Physics of the local University of Technology. Then he moved to Zurich, where on May 26, 1913, he obtained his habilitation at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (the reviewers of his achievements were: Prof. Albert Einstein and Prof. Pierre Weiss) and a year later at the University of Zurich. Until the end of his stay in this city, he lectured on the latest topics in the field of theoretical and experimental physics at both universities (it was the time of the formation of the modern, quantum, and relativistic description of physics phenomena), and actively participated in seminars and scientific discussions. He has also worked for various technology companies but has consistently rejected permanent, well-paid jobs in the industry by devoting himself to creative scientific work.
During his stay in Zurich, Mieczysław Wolfke belonged to the group of physicists who set the paths of world science. During this period, he published the work “On the possibility of optical imaging of molecular grids,” which was the world’s first concept of holography (1920). Wolfke noticed that one could first write an image on a photographic plate by illuminating the crystal with X-rays and then read it under magnification using a different optical system and visible light.
When Poland regained independence, his dream became to return to the country to build Polish science and bring it to world standards. In 1922, due to a competition procedure, he was selected and then appointed by the Head of State, Józef Piłsudski, professor of experimental physics at the Warsaw University of Technology.
In 1924 he established cooperation with the Institute of Low Temperatures in Leiden. In collaboration with Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and Willem Keesom, Wolfke proposed solutions that led to discovering two forms of the liquid helium and the solidification of liquid helium under high pressure. He transferred his experience to Poland, where he organized and equipped the Institute of Low Temperatures at the Warsaw University of Technology.
In Poland, Wolfke has become a recognized expert in technical physics and the implementation of the latest scientific achievements to the national economy and defense. He worked in the Temporary Advisory and Scientific Committee at the Ministry of Military Affairs, presenting, based on his intelligence, the achievements of Nazi Germany in the field of missile technology and reviewing various, often pioneering, possibilities of military technology in the light of scientific knowledge. He initiated, among others, work on light telephony at the Institute of Engineering Research. In 1933, he took over the management of rocket work for the Department of Armaments. As early as May 1939, in the pages of the Polska Zbrojna magazine, he warned against nuclear weapons.
Wolfke’s scientific plans, like his work in the field of armaments, were interrupted by World War II. The Germans confiscated the equipment from his plant at the Warsaw University of Technology. After 1939, Wolfke, as a person known in German science, with the occupant’s consent, headed the Research Institute of Technical Physics of the Warsaw University of Technology and the State Higher Technical School PWST, which was established in place of the polytechnic. He used his position to protect and support the Polish Underground State. He also took part in secret teaching.
After the war, he organized the Silesian University of Technology (initially in Krakow) and the Gdańsk University of Technology. He also participated in the reconstruction of the organizational potential of the Warsaw University of Technology. In 1946 he went abroad to gain knowledge, resources, and contacts necessary to build an essential center of world science. The trip’s destination was the United States, which gathered the most important figures of physics of that time as a result of the war. However, due to refusal to grant a visa, he went to Zurich - the most important research center in post-war Europe. There he died suddenly in May 1947.
Open mind to new ideas, ideas and people gives excellent opportunities for self-development. Wolfke accepted ideas and did not despise people because of their nationality, work, or interests. He was not afraid to discuss but also to draw on the knowledge and experiences of others. He always looked for truth honestly and inquisitively confronted his ideas with experience. Every achievement in his mind raised the question of practicality and areas of application. These ideas are essential to this day when the Polish economy needs innovation and competitiveness on world markets. We want the announcement of the year 2022 of Mieczysław Wolfke to make many people hear about him and be inspired by the values he represented: knowledge based on facts, curiosity about the world, comprehensive development of one’s skills, fighting for dreams, openness to what is new and achieving goals despite the difficulties.
The year of Mieczysław Wolfke will indicate the crucial role that science and innovative economy play in the development of modern societies. It will emphasize the vital place of Poles in the development of global scientific and technical thought. It will strengthen national identity by promoting the attitude of using the potential of citizens in building the security and competitiveness of the Homeland.
Searching for talents as Wolfke - the competition addressed to students in grades 7 and 8 of primary schools and secondary school students.
In the first step, participants will have to complete a short age-appropriate test.
The second stage will consist in sending the works in min. three out of five categories:
- literature (limeric related to the figure of Mieczysław Wolfke, an interview with a contemporary physicist or an invented interview with Mieczysław Wolfke regarding his scientific achievements),
- art (a portrait of a scientist, a poster that arouses interest in physics or shows the achievements of a scientist),
- film / photo (film / photo of a physical phenomenon with an explanation),
- experiment (preparation, execution and description of own experiment or one proposed by the Organizing Committee),
- for the youngest (a project and a description of a game that can be organized in a kindergarten or school, a project of an educational board game for children concerning, among others, the achievements of Mieczysław Wolfke).
About 50 finalists will be selected, who in the final stage, taking place in Warsaw, will present works in their category (experiences, literary works, posters, etc.) prepared by them and sent to the Competition.
The competition committee will evaluate the substantive and artistic level of the works performed and the manner of their presentation. It will be a kind of "defense" of work.
Science picnic with Mieczysław Wolfke
The aim of the picnics will be to create an atmosphere of a science festival in places related to the figure of Mieczysław Wolfke, i.e. at the Warsaw University of Technology (inauguration of the activity in May 2022), then, among others, in Łask, Częstochowa, at ul. Wolfke in Warsaw and Wrocław. The proposal to organize Picnics in Zurich and Leiden in cooperation with embassies in Switzerland and the Netherlands is also being considered. The picnics would focus on student shows of phenomena and technologies on which Wolfke worked, ie holography, cryogenics, light generation, jet engines, light telephony, etc. The picnic will also include presentations by winners of some competitions. The whole thing will be open, in which everyone will be able to "touch the physics" of the presented phenomena.
Scientific symposium "Mieczysław Wolfke 1922-2022"
The symposium will present the most important historical works by Mieczysław Wolfke on two-stage optical imaging, low-temperature physics, quantum physics, light sources and the organization of technical physics in Poland, as well as contemporary achievements and views on the same issues. The event could be combined with a cyclical meeting of deans and directors of institutes of physics in Poland and with the convention of the Polish Photonic Association, as well as with the celebration of the International Day of Light.
The Polish Physical Society Mieczysław Wolfke Award for the best invention created by a physicist and research grants for applied physics
It is planned to organize a pool of funds for projects on the border of basic and applied research, especially interdisciplinary projects, which do not find their sources in the current system of financing science.
It is also planned to fund a new award of the Polish Physical Society (next to the M. Smoluchowski Medal and the W. Rubinowicz Award) for physicists specializing (such as M. Wolfke) in technical physics. The distinguishing feature here will be inventiveness, i.e. the number of patents and the impact of the invention on the civilization development of Poland and the world. The prize will be awarded by the PPS awards jury.
Holographic installations and initiatives in urban space
The holographic technique is currently undergoing an extremely dynamic development and perhaps in a few decades it will be able to revolutionize our civilization. The action aims to show the public what holography really is and to make people aware of the fact that it was pioneered by a Pole - Mieczysław Wolfke. It will consist in placing in selected places (urban space, public utility facilities, etc.) display cases with a hologram, a lighting system and an information board. Within the scope of the budgetary possibilities, other initiatives will also be undertaken to increase the visibility and social coverage of the event program, such as flash mobs, art installations, murals, etc.
Special Edition of the "CanSat" competition - "Star of Poland"
A special edition of the "CanSat" competition will be organized under the slogan "Star of Poland" in reference to the unsuccessful action of 1938. At that time, at the initiative of military circles, an attempt was made to achieve a manned flight into the stratosphere in order to break the flight altitude record and undertake scientific research at the same time. Mieczysław Wolfke became the head of the scientific committee. As part of the activity, we will try to refer to this history, bring it closer to the public, also using it to promote the scientific purpose of such undertakings. As in 1938, we want the action to become a promotion of Poland as well.
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