Professor Romuald W. Marczyński

A Professor, mathematician, pioneer of Polish technical computer science, he is one of the first in Poland, which pointed out the desirability of a translation of the French term l'informatique, the Polish term computer science. Born in Skarysko-Kamienna, Poland, he graduated from high school just before the civil war. In 1946, he became interested in computers after reading an article about the ENIAC machine in Problemy, a Polish popular science magazine. He graduated from the Electrical Engineering Department at Warsaw University of Technology in 1948 and began working there as an assistant. At the end of the 1940s he joined the Group of the Mathematical Apparatus (GAM) at the Mathematical Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS), and worked there for the remainder of his life. Between 1953-1955 he was the primary creator of the EMAL machine designs; EMAL1, a binary serial machine; and with Kazimierz Baakierem, Lesławem Niemczyckim and Andrzej Harlandem, EMAL2. In addition to these computers he created the XYZ and BINEG. He was a member of the Polish mathematical society and the Polish society of Theoretical and Applied Electrical Engineering (PTETiS). In the second year of the existence of this society, he organized the first scientific conference on the still current on "digital Engineering in Electrical Engineering" in 1962. He was awarded the Commander's cross of the order of the rebirth of Polish, silver Cross of merit (1954). He died in Washington, D.C. on January 1, 2000.