Born: 8 May, 1905, Warsaw, Russian partition of Poland (presently Poland)
Died: 24 Jan 1982, Warsaw, Poland
Early days. Karol Borsuk's father, Marian Borsuk, was a surgeon in Warsaw . His mother was Zofia Maciejewska. During the years 1915-1923 he attended the Gimnazjum S. Staszica (S. Staszic Highschool) in Warsaw which during the period 1915-1918 was still occupied by the Russians.
Higher education.In 1923 he entered the University of Warsaw , which was refounded as a Polish university in 1915. At this time a strong school of mathematics grew there with topology being one of the main topics.
Teaching at Warsaw University.Inventing the theory of retracts.
Borsuk obtained his master's degree from the University of Warsaw in 1927 and then, from 1929 through 1934, he taught at the University, at the Chair I of Mathematics chaired by Sierpinski . He continued to study for his doctorate, under the supervision of Mazurkiewicz, and this was awarded in 1930 for his dissertation Sur les rétractes (published in 1931) in which he invented the theory of retracts.
Marriage.On 26 April 1936 Borsuk married Zofia Paczkowska. They would have two children, both girls.
Promotion to full professor.In 1938 he became a full professor (professor nadzwyczajny) at the Warsaw University. The second center for mathematical research in Poland at this time was Lwow (presently Lviv, Ukraine). Borsuk visited there and during one such visit began a collaboration with Ulam. Ulam describes their joint mathematical projects:-
We started collaborating from the first. From him I learned about the truly geometric, more visual, almost "palpable" tricks and methods of topology. Our results were published in a number of papers which we sent to Polish journals and to some journals abroad. Actually my first publication in the United States appeared while I was in Lwow. It was a joint paper with Borsuk, published in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. We defined the idea of "epsilon homeomorphism" - approximate homeomorphisms - and the behaviour of some topological invariants under such more general transformations - continuous ones, but not necessarily one to one. A joint paper on symmetric products introduced an idea that modifies the definition of Cartesian product and leads to the construction of some curious manifolds.
In Lwow Borsuk joined the mathematicians in the Scottish Café and contributed to the open problems which they wrote down in the famous book.
Teaching at an underground University. During 1939-1944 he taught at the underground Warsaw University (higher and college education was banned for Poles by the Nazis). He also taught at the Wawelberg’s School of Machine Construction (Szkola Budowy Maszyn im. Wawelberga i Rotwanda). He was caught and imprisoned for several months. During Warsaw 1944 Insurection he was deported with his family to Pruszkow. He escaped and was in hiding to the end of the war.
Post war professorship.In 1945 Borsuk continued in his post in the University of Warsaw, a post he held throughout his career, being promoted to full professor II (profesor zwyczajny) in 1946. In 1952-1964 he was the Chairman of the chair of Mathematics of the Warsaw University. During 1948-1975 he was the Chairman of the Topology Chair at the State Mathematical Institute (Panstwowy Instytut Matematyczny).
Teaching and doing research at the USA.He spent some time in the United States with a number of one year appointments. He was at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton during session 1946-47, the University of California at Berkeley during session 1959-60, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison during session 1963-64. He had lectures at the world’s 60 mathematical centers.
In Warsaw, Borsuk led a seminar in which he developed a unique atmosphere of successful international cooperation. He influenced strongly the development of the whole area of infinite-dimensional topology with his theory of retracts and his theory of shape which became major topics for discussion at his seminar.
Honors.Many honors were given to Borsuk for his remarkable contributions. He became vice director of the Mathematical Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw in 1956. He was granted honorary life membership in the Polish Mathematical Society in 1978. He published about 170 research papers and several monographs and textbooks.
Source:
St.Andrews Univ.
Based on the article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson
GAP is Copyright (C) 1986--1997 by Lehrstuhl D fuer Mathematik,
RWTH Aachen, Aachen. Germany and Copyright (C) 1997-2001 by School of Mathematical and Computational Sciences, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, UK
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