Samuel Dickstein was a Polish mathematician of Jewish origin. He served as a professor of mathematics and history of science, and was a great promoter of Polish mathematics.
Background
Samuel Dickstein was born on May 12, 1851, in Warsaw, Poland. He was brought up during difficult years for Poles, most of whom aspired to see the country of Poland reestablished. Poland did not formally exist at the time of Dickstein's birth and much of the pattern of his life was dominated by the aim of Poles to restore their country. All the members of his family were killed during the Holocaust.
Education
In a policy implemented between 1869 and 1874, all secondary schooling was in the Russian language. There was no Polish university for Dickstein to attend so, in 1866, he entered one of the only higher education establishments in Warsaw, the teacher's college. He studied there until 1869, the year in which it was converted into the Russian University of Warsaw.
From 1870 to 1876 Dickstein attended this Russian university in Warsaw specialising in mathematics. He graduated with a Master's degree in 1876 but all the time he spent at university he held positions in secondary schools teaching mathematics to provide the means to support his studies.
Career
Dickstein devoted his life to building up the orga-nizational structure for Polish science, especially for mathematics. In the eighteenth century Poland’s territory had been divided among Prussia, Austria, and Russia; and thus Polish science education and scientific life depended mostly on personal initiative and not on state support. In his youth Dickstein experienced the escalation of national oppression after the unsuccessful uprising of 1863.
From 1870 Dickstein taught in Polish secondary schools, concentrating on mathematics; from 1878 to 1888 he directed his own private school in Warsaw. In 1884, with A. Czajewicz, he founded Biblioteka Matematyczno-Fizvczna, which was intended to be a series of scientific textbooks written in Polish. These books greatly influenced the development of Polish scientific literature. In 1888 Dickstein took part in the founding of the first Polish mathematical-physical magazine, Prace matematyczno-fizyczne. Later he founded other publications, such as Wiadomosci matematyczne and the education journal Ruch pedagogiczny.
The Poles’ efforts after the creation of the Polish university led in 1906 to the founding of Towarzystwo Kursow Naukowych, which organized the university science courses. Dickstein was the first rector of that society. After the revival of the Polish university in Warsaw he became professor of mathematics there in 1919. His own mathematical work was concerned mainly with algebra.
His main sphere of interest besides education was the history of mathematics, and he published a number of articles on Polish mathematicians that contributed to their recognition throughout the world. Of especial note are the monograph Hoene Wronski, jego zycie i prace (Krakow, 1896) and the edition of the Leibniz-Kochanski correspondence, published in Prace matematyczno-fizyczne, 7 (1901), and 8 (1902).
The list of his scientific works includes more than 200 titles. Dickstein died during the bombardment of Warsaw and his family perished during the German occupation of Poland.
Dickstein was one of the founders of the Jewish party Zjednoczenie ("the union"), which advocated the assimilation of Polish Jews.
Membership
In 1905 Dickstein became a founder of the Warsaw Scientific Society, and he was instrumental in the development of the Society of Polish Mathematicians.
Appreciation of Dickstein's historical works was shown in his election as vice-president of the International Academy of Sciences.
International Academy of Sciences
,
United States
Warsaw Scientific Society
,
Poland
1905
Society of Polish Mathematicians
,
Poland
Personality
Kazimierz Kuratowski wrote that Dickstein "was not a scholar of outstanding creative achievements, and certainly his lectures presented a somewhat outdated algebra; they were, however, excellently shaped lectures by an enthusiast for mathematics, who infected young adepts in mathematics with his own ardour; this was by no means unimportant for the new staff of renascent Polish Science."
Quotes from others about the person
Stan Ulam met Dickstein, who was then in his eighties, at the International Mathematical Congress in Zürich in 1932: "He was wandering around looking for his contemporaries. Dickstein's teacher had been a student of Cauchy in the early nineteenth century, and he still considered Poincaré, who died in 1912, a bright young man. To me this was like going into the prehistory of mathematics and it filled me with a kind of philosophical awe."