Kazimierz Kuratowski
| Kazimierz Kuratowski | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
February 2, 1896 Warsaw |
| Died | June 18, 1980 (aged 84) Warsaw |
| Nationality | Polish |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | University of Warsaw |
| Alma mater | University of Warsaw |
| Doctoral advisor | |
| Doctoral students | |
| Known for | Kuratowski's theorem |
Kazimierz Kuratowski (Polish pronunciation: [kaˈʑimjɛʂ kuɾaˈtɔfskʲi], 2 February 1896 – 18 June 1980) was a Polish mathematician and logician. He was one of the leading representatives of the Warsaw School of Mathematics.
Kazimierz Kuratowski was born in Warsaw, Vistula Land (the part of the former Kingdom of Poland controlled by the Russian Empire), on 2 February 1896. He was a son of Marek Kuratow, a barrister, and Róża Karzewska. He completed a Warsaw secondary school, which was named after general Paweł Chrzanowski. In 1913, he enrolled in an engineering course at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, in part because he did not wish to study in Russian; instruction in Polish was prohibited. He completed only one year of study when the outbreak of World War I precluded any further enrollment. In 1915, Russian forces withdrew from Warsaw and Warsaw University was reopened with Polish as the language of instruction. Kuratowski restarted his university education there the same year, this time in mathematics. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1921, in newly independent Poland.
In autumn 1921 Kuratowski was awarded the Ph.D. degree for his groundbreaking work. His thesis statement consisted of two parts. One was devoted to an axiomatic construction of topology via the closure axioms. This first part (republished in a slightly modified form in 1922) has been cited in hundreds of scientific articles.
The second part of Kuratowski's thesis was devoted to continua irreducible between two points. This was the subject of a French doctoral thesis written by Zygmunt Janiszewski. Since Janiszewski was deceased, Kuratowski's supervisor was Wacław Sierpiński. Kuratowski's thesis solved certain problems in set theory raised by a Belgian mathematician, Charles-Jean Étienne Gustave Nicolas, Baron de la Vallée Poussin.
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