Franciszek Włodarski

(b. 2 December 1889, Gorzków, near Krasnystaw; d. 8 January 1944, Staszów)

Włodarski attended the lower secondary school in Zamość in 1899–1905, and then went on to the Staszic High School in Lublin. From 1907 he studied in the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, where he gained a first degree in mathematics in 1910, followed by a doctorate in 1911. In 1912–1915 he continued his mathematical studies in Göttingen. On his return to Poland, from 1916 to 1918 he worked in Warsaw as a high school teacher, while also lecturing in geometry in the Mathematics and Physics Faculty of the Free Polish University. In 1919 he moved to Poznań University, where from 1919 to 1929 he was head of the Second Mathematics Department. In 1924 he was named an associate professor by the Supreme People’s Council in Poznań, although the appointment was not approved by the Ministry of Religions and Public Education. In 1929 he left for the United States to develop his invention – a device for the sequential reproduction of images visible from all sides, which he patented in the US, the UK, Canada, and Germany. His research interests included analytical geometry, projective geometry, and geometric constructions. He published eight papers, two academic textbooks, and a Polish translation from Italian of a book on projective geometry by Federigo Enriques.

Roman Murawski

L. Maligranda, W. Wnuk, 100 lat matematyki na uniwersytecie w Poznaniu 1919–2019, Wyd. Nauk. UAM, Poznań 2021.
S. Domoradzki et al., Słownik biograficzny matematyków polskich, Tarnobrzeg 2003.
R. Duda, Matematycy XIX i XX wieku związani z Polską, Wyd. Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, Wrocław 2012.