Uczony i dzieło : rola Kazimierza Dziewońskiego w rozwoju geografii = The scholar and his work : the role of Kazimierz Dziewoński in the development of geography
Authors: Śleszyński Przemysław ,   Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Geografii i Przestrzennego Zagospodarowania im. Stanisława Leszczyckiego.
Published: May 2023

The monograph being handed over to the Reader is the outcome of a scientific Session devoted to the life and work of Professor Kazimierz Dziewoński (1910 1994), which took place on 11 April 2016 at the headquarters of the Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IGiPZ PAN) in Warsaw. The session, prepared as a tribute to this outstanding scientist, but also to recall his achievements, was held under the motto „The scientific inheritance of Professor Kazimierz Dziewoński and its impact on the development of geogra¬phy”. Honorary Patronage was given by leading Polish scientific and vocational institutions, whose activities and contemporary state of development were influenced and sometimes cre¬atively co-created by Professor Dziewoński: These included the Committee of Geographical Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Committee for Spatial Economy and Regional Planning of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Society of Polish Town Planners and the Committee on the Geography of Settlement and Population of the Polish Geographical Society. All of this material in this volume is divided into four sections. In the first part, there are nine papers on Professor Kazimierz Dziewoński’s areas of scientific activity, which indicate their importance for the development of socio-economic geography. The second part of the monograph presents the work and research attitude of Professor Kazimierz Dziewoński in the context of his role model and intellectual inspiration. It contains 5 studies. The third part contains reflections and reminiscences of people who had the privilege of knowing, and often working closely with, Professor Kazimierz Dziewoński. From these texts, we can learn, first of all, what kind of a man K. Dziewoński was, but also what were the life paths of his graduates, doctoral students and people who met him in their academic careers. Professor Dziewoński had promoted 21 doctors, some of whom had become full professors, and they had their doctoral students who went on to become professors. So we can already speak of three ‘professor’ generations. On the one hand this shows how profound the generational change in Polish socio-economic geography has been since the times of K. Dziewoński, and on the other hand it shows the durability of the Polish school of settlement and population geography. The editors of this volume give the last word to Professor Dziewoński himself. This is a tran¬script of an interview conducted in 1987 by the Professor’s student, Zbigniew Rykiel (Without retouch. An interview with Professor Kazimierz Dziewoński). This is an extremely unique material, thanks to which one can become acquainted with Professor Dziewoński’s personal views on his life, as well as on the development of socio-economic geography in Poland – espe¬cially the issues of settlements and population, against the background of various political and socio-economic conditions. The additional value of this recording stems from the fact that it was made before the fall of the so-called Iron Curtain. Professor Dziewoński reveals that his worldview was shaped by his activity in the pre-war Catholic Academic Youth Association „Odrodzenie” (“Renascence” ), affiliated with the Catholic Action (banned during the communist period). From the interview, we can also learn a lot about the backstage of the most important post-war geographical conferences, including those in Osieczna (1955), Jabłonna (1966) and Rydzyna (1983). Overall, the interview is politically and scientifically oriented, and can be a val¬uable source for assessing the functioning of not only geography in the period before 1989.