Vladimirskaya street, 60, Kyiv, Ukraine, 01033
Wróblewski received his mathematical and physical studies at the University of Kyiv (nowadays Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv) in Kyiv, Ukraine
Sibling-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539 Munich, Germany
From 1872 to 1876 Zygmunt studied at the University of Munich in Munich, Germany. He became a Doctor of Science.
Wróblewski's Portrait
Z. Wróblewski and K. Olszewski on the Polish stamp
Cracow, Poland
Liquefaction apparatus designed by professor Zygmunt Wróblewski
Wróblewski's Portrait
Wróblewski's Portrait
Z. Wróblewski and K. Olszewski on the Polish stamp
Cracow, Poland
Liquefaction apparatus designed by professor Zygmunt Wróblewski
Vladimirskaya street, 60, Kyiv, Ukraine, 01033
Wróblewski received his mathematical and physical studies at the University of Kyiv (nowadays Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv) in Kyiv, Ukraine
Sibling-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539 Munich, Germany
From 1872 to 1876 Zygmunt studied at the University of Munich in Munich, Germany. He became a Doctor of Science.
Wroblewski
chemist pedagogue physicist scientist
Zygmunt Florenty Wróblewski was born on October 28, 1845, in Grodno, at that time Russian Empire (nowadays Belarus), into a modest noble family. His father Anton Anastasiy Kazimirovich Wróblewski was a Secretary of the Court of Conscience of the Grodno Governorate. His mother's name was Karolina nee Man'kova.
After finishing the Grodno Gymnasium in 1862 with excellent results, Wróblewski began his mathematical and physical studies at the University of Kiev (nowadays Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv) in Kiev, Ukraine. After a six-year exile for participating in January 1863 Uprising against Imperial Russia, he studied in Berlin and Heidelberg. He defended his doctoral dissertation at Munich University in Munich, Germany in 1876.
The outburst of the anti-Russian uprising in 1863 engaged a young Wróblewski in a swirl of conspiratorial actions, which caused his arrest by the end of June; Zygmunt spent sixteen months in remand, waiting for the trial. Only his young age saved him from the death penalty, but unfortunately, that was not enough to rescue him from the exile to Siberia.
At first, Zygmunt stayed in Tomsk, at the West Siberian Plain. He coached students to earn his living and gained knowledge about science through the popular literature by Russian authors. Thanks to his family’s efforts, in 1867 he was re-settled in the European part of Ural, where the climate was much milder, but on the other hand, the total intellectual vacuum made his exile more and more difficult.
After six years of wandering, owing to an amnesty for the Polish insurgents, Wróblewski regained his freedom and returned to Warsaw. Universities of the Russian Empire were closed to him, but he acquired knowledge of mathematics and physics and studied foreign languages on his own. Imprisonment and deportation undermined his health an ever-worsening eye illness threatened him with blindness. Fortunately, eye operations were performed in a clinic in Berlin by a famous ophthalmologist – Professor Gräff – who saved him from the loss of eyesight.
After completing his education Zygmunt wrote letters to many professors at various academies and proposed himself as an assistant. The only one who responded was Johann P.G. von Jolly who is most famous for the advice he gave to Max Planck against studying physics as ‘in this field everything important has already been discovered and what remains is filling some irrelevant gaps’. Therefore, in 1872, at the University of Munich Wróblewski became an assistant to Professor Jolly, who facilitated his access to a well-equipped laboratory; there he conducted a series of experiments and wrote a dissertation entitled ‘The Investigation of the Induction of Electric Energy by Mechanical Means’; this paper led to his graduating in just two years and with the greatest praise he was given the Ph.D.
Neither life in exile, nor ill-health, nor even difficult financial situation disturbed him much while pursuing the intended objective. On the contrary, they toughened him up and taught him to fight against adversity. His talent and ambition were finally noticed and appreciated and Zygmunt was offered a post as an assistant in a modern laboratory at newly-established German University of Strasburg where he used to give lectures concerning mechanics and the physics of liquids and gases. All that time Zygmunt became interested in problems with gas diffusion, designed his own apparatus and began research that resulted in his postdoctoral dissertation.
Throughout his studies in Germany, Wróblewski’s thoughts were centered on the desire to return to his homeland. But before it happened, a student grant enabled him to visit some of the most advanced laboratories in the world and meet some of the leading scientific figures in Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, and London, among others. Later he worked at the renowned Ecole Normale Superiéure in Paris, where he performed experiments on the absorption of gases under high pressure. During his stay in Paris, Wróblewski designed and commissioned the apparatus that was able to conduct experiments under the pressure of 70 atmospheres.
In 1882, having spent thirteen years on emigration, Wróblewski settled down in Krakow and became a professor of the Faculty of Physics at the Jagiellonian University. Zygmunt was a respected and well-regarded lecturer. He installed a modern chemical laboratory with the latest electrical appliances there. It was one of the first electrical installations in Krakow. In January 1883, Karol Olszewski, a professor of the department of the analytical chemistry, offered to him a scientific partnership with a purpose of oxygen and nitrogen liquefaction in the static state.
Not only did the duo of Wróblewski and Olszewski managed to liquefy oxygen and nitrogen, but also to solidify methanol and carbon dioxide. In the world of science, the achievements of Polish scientists were greatly appreciated. Some of the best contemporaneous scholars congratulated them on their investigations. Their feat was described in the Warsaw and Cracovian press and foreign science journals; the liquefaction of some of the ‘permanent gases’ had a colossal impact on the validity of the kinetic theory of gases.
Unfortunately, soon afterward the partnership of Olszewski and Wróblewski fell apart, allegedly because of the rivalry issues, and the two scientists decided to work individually. Wróblewski still worked on the physics of low temperatures; he constructed and improved the installation for liquefaction; also, the Polish academic worked on hydrogen’s compressibility and determined and published its critical parameters. Later, Olszewski reluctantly admitted that Wróblewski’s findings subscribed to what he had measured before. In 1885, Wróblewski investigated the properties of many more substances in low temperatures.
At the end of 1887, Wróblewski started preparing the publication on the hydrogen and all of its known properties. Sadly, Zygmunt did not succeed in completing it as, on the 25th of March 1888, an unfortunate accident occurred at the laboratory. The oil from the upset paraffin lamp spilled on his clothes and took fire. Realizing what was happening, Wróblewski run out to the university yard, where two students helped him quell the flames on his body with coats. Unfortunately, the burns he suffered were so serious that he died on the 16th of April 1888, five years after the memorable experiments that nearly brought a Nobel prize to him and his partner, Karol Olszewski.
In 1883, Wróblewski with K. Olszewski was the first to liquefy the components of air-oxygen and nitrogen- and to determine the critical states of the gases. The results are still valid today. Meanwhile, the need for liquefied gases still increases; they are commonly used in chemical, metallurgical, electronics, pharmaceutical, and food industry. Without the cryogenic liquids, astronautics, astronomy and many other fields of science would not be able to reach the present stage of development.
Wróblewski was the first to determine critical temperatures for carbon monoxide (1883), oxygen and nitrogen (1885– 1888). Wróblewski’s works have disproved definitively the metaphysical views on the so-called ‘mature’ gases (incompressible ones, which cannot be turned into liquids) and initiated a wide range of researches in low-temperature physics. He established the relationship between critical temperatures and pressure values for gases (known as the ‘Wróblewski theorem’). Wróblewski performed the world’s first study of electroconductivity in metals under low temperatures, in particular, he determined the electrical resistance value of copper under temperature close to absolute zero.
Wróblewski participated in the January 1863 Uprising against Imperial Russia and afterward spent many years in exile.
Wróblewski was a corresponding member of the Polish Academy of Sciences (1883) and the Academy of Sciences in Vienna (1886). He was an honorary member of the Society of Physics and Natural History in Geneva and of Society for Sciences Promotion in Lviv.
Wróblewski was considered a man of few words, interested only in science; he was particularly silent on the subject of his exile. Wróblewski’s contemporaries put down this reluctance to communicate, together with his moods and secretive nature, to his suffering – both physical and mental – during deportation.
Anton was born ib 1819, in Krakow, Poland. He was a Secretary of the Court of Conscience of the Grodno Governorate.
In April 1883 Wroblevski and Olszewski were the first in the world to obtain liquid oxygen in measurable quantities, liquefied nitrogen and carbon oxide.
