Abstract

ON SOME STRIKING EXAMPLE OF JAN CZOCHRALSKI, AND HIS SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENTS, ALLOWING TO UNDERLINE HIS YEAR 2013 IN POLAND S u m m a r y A question has been addressed, and then partly answered, namely, to what degree Jan Czochralski, an eminent and well-recognized abroad Polish crystallographer, chemist, and metallurgist, also a material (metal) scientist, should, when based on his achievements in research, belong to (physicochemical) metallurgy, or ought to be recognized rather as a (“pure”) chemist, working in a chemical fashion with metals and their impurities-containing alloys. The actual ground for trying to answer the intriguing question, relies on the fact that he performed his research entirely within physicochemical, or specifically, mechanochemical metallurgy of complex as well as very practical material systems that he was able to resolve successfully by his treatments. Its has been attempted to show that his type of research should be described as interdisciplinary, thus, being synergistically intermingled amongst a few crossdisciplines of technological and basic research. Astonishingly, his historical-context sensitive life, can also be viewed as the one being well networked amongst many areas of his activity, drawing him as inventor, university professor, owner, investor, art supporter, philanthropist, as well as some truly modest poetry author, or finally, husband and father of three children.