[Tadeusz Tucholski (1898-1940). A contribution to the scientific biography].

Abstract

Assistant professor Tadeusz Tucholski Ph.D., murdered in Katyń, was one of the most outstanding representatives of the younger generation of Polish physical chemist scholars of the interwar period. He published over 30 scientific papers in the field of physical and chemical properties of explosions, kinetics and catalysis and also toxicology and forensics. Thesere searches were partly performed at the University of Poznań, in the period 1926-1939, at the Faculty of Medicine of the Department of Physics where Tucholski was employed as a senior assistant and was the closest associate of professor S. Kalandyk, partly at the Department of Forensic Medicine headed by professor S. Horoszkiewicz in the chemical-toxicological laboratory which Tucholski ranin the years 1931-1939, partly at the Warsaw University of Technology in the Department of Explosives Technology of the Faculty of Chemistry headed by professor T. Urbański, where he had been lecturing "On the latest theories of explosives" since 1937 and in 1934-35 in Cambridge, as a teaching fellow of the National Culture Fund, in Colloid Science Laboratory headed by professor E.K. Rideal. In 1903 Tucholski moved with his parents to Zabaykalye, in 1911--to Brazil. He returned to Poland in 1920, joined the Polish Army and with the 14th Polish Medium Regiment fought on the fronts of the Polish-Bolshevik War. He was drafted to the School of Pyrotechnics Foremen at Corps District Command number VII (Poznań). After graduating, Tucholski remained on active duty as a professional pyrotechnic: from 1921 to 1929 he was appointed the head of the Laboratory of Chemical and Pyrotechnic Ammunition Workshop No. 2 in Poznań and as an inspector of magazines of explosives. In 1927 he was transferred to the reserves, in 1932 after having graduated from the Officer Cadet School in Jarocin, Tucholski was appointed a second lieutenant in the Army Reserve, and later moved from the officers infantry corpsto the army ordnance corps. As part of his specialty, he constantly cooperated with the army. In the years 1937-1939,Tucholski was a technical adviser to the Ministry of Military Affairs and from August 1939--an independent researcher at the Institute of Armament Technology. He took part in the works of the Explosives Commission of the Military Technical Society. Tadeusz Tucholski was a self-taught man. He passed his A-level examsin course of his military service in October 1923 and began studying chemistry at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the University of Poznań. He obtained his Master's degree in 1927, the rank and the degree of Ph.D. in the field of chemical sciences and physics in 1930. In 1936, he became the Associate Professor of physical chemistry of explosives at the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Technology in Warsaw. Tucholski invented the method of the differential thermal analysis. He is the author of the widely used differential calorimeter which records the-processes of conversion of explosives during heating, presently known as the Differential Scanning Calorimeter.