Profesor Andrzej Szczepan Białynicki-Birula (1935–2021)

Abstrakt

Andrzej Białynicki-Birula, Professor at the University of Warsaw died on April 19, 2021 at the age of 85. He was an outstanding mathematician, who made important contributions to algebra and algebraic geometry. He published many important articles in most prestigious journals such that Annals of Mathematics, Inventiones mathematicae, Topology, American Journal of Mathematics. Professor Białynicki graduated from the University of Warsaw and obtained Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1960. After his return to Poland he initiated and played a major role in modernization of research and university curricula in a broad spectrum of mathematical disciplines related to algebra. He has published several textbooks on linear algebra, algebra, algebraic geometry and cryptography, which are currently used at the University of Warsaw and many other Polish universities. Professor Białynicki-Birula served as the dean of the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics (1977–1981) and as the vice-rector of the University of Warsaw (1985–1987). He was an ordinary member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and a member of the Academia Europea. In recognition of his achievements Professor Białynicki-Birula received several prizes and distinctions, among them the Officers Cross of the Order Polonia Restituta. Professor Białynicki-Birula was also an art collector, particularly interested in a gothic sculpture, on which he was an expert. In his summerhouse near Belorussian border he was renovating and collecting ethnographic objects related to everyday life and work of peasants. He left a wife, Magdalena Borsuk-Białynicka, a professor of palaeontology, two daughters, a son and 11 grandchildren.