The century of Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, PAS â the idea and will power

Abstract

The Institute was founded in 1918, shortly after the re-establishment of Poland as an independent country. It was based on three pre-existing laboratories affiliated with the Scientific Society of Warsaw. The formation and development of the Institute was supported in part by a donation of Nadine Sieber-Shumova, a close co-worker of Marceli Nencki from Berne and St. Petersburg. Over the next two decades the Institute grew to become the leading biological research centre in Poland. The outbreak of World War II interrupted a period of its intensive expansion and achievement of scientific excellence in the field of experimental biology. After the turmoil of the war, during which over a dozen of the Instituteâs staff lost their lives, and its premises (including most of its 30.000 volume library)were destroyed, the surviving staff members
(Jan Dembowski, Stefania Dembowska, Jerzy Konorski, Liliana Lubińska, Włodzimierz Niemierko and Stella Niemierko) re-established the Nencki Institute. In 1952, the Institute was incorporated into the newly founded Polish Academy of Sciences, and the Instituteâs director, Prof. Dembowski, became the first President of the Academy. During the period of 1953-55, a newly erected building at 3 Pasteur Street in Warsaw became the final home of the Nencki Institute. The research goals of the Nencki Institute are to arrive at molecular, cellular and systematic explanations of excitability, movement, development, memory, learning, behaviour, ageing and disease. All those tasks need to be both intellectually satisfying and relevant to problems of human health. Institute edit journal Acta Neurobiologiae Experimentalis. Directors from
1947: Jan Dembowski, Włodzimierz Niemierko, Jerzy Konorski, Kazimierz Zieliński, Maciej Jan Nałęcz, Jerzy Duszyński, Adam Szewczyk. At present Agnieszka Dobrzyń.