About the Beginning and Development of Technical Physics in Poland

On the Margines of the Year of Physics

Abstract

A brief account of the first - unsuccessful - attemps to create research centers  in the field of technical (applied) physics in Poland in the period before the outbreak of World War is given. Outstanding physicists such as Mieczysław Wolfke, Stanisław Kalinowski, Aleksander Jabłoński and Wacław Dziewulski took part in this trials.  Activities in this direction continued after the war, especially after the establishment of the Polish Academy of Sciences, within whch several institutes dealing with the application of physics were established.  The most important of them incude the Institute of Physics and Institute of Fundamental Technological Research in Warsaw, as well as the Institute of Fluid-Flow Machinery in Gdańsk and Institute of Nuclear Physics in Kraków. Outside the structure of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Industrial Institute of Electronics and the Institute of Plasma Physics and Laser Microfusion were established, both in Warsaw.   Technical Physics center establised at the Warsaw, Wrocław and Poznań Universities of Technology and at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń are also discussed. Spectacular examples  of medical applications include photodynamic therapy based on the Jabłoński diagram, optical tomography and proton radioteraphy for eye cancer.