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Kyler & Toris

Waclaw Sierpinski

Waclaw Sierpinski was born on March 14^th , 1882 in the Russian Empire; which part of it is now Poland. And he died on October 21^st , 1969 in Warsaw, Poland. So he lived a total of 87 years!

Waclaw Sierpinski went to school in Warsaw. All of the teachers quickly realized his talent for mathematics. Despite the difficulties, Sierpinski entered the Department of Mathematics and Physics of the University of Warsaw in 1899.

In 1903, he won a prize for the best essay. Once Sierpinski graduated in 1904 he became a teacher at an all girls school in Warsaw. But the school closed because of a strike.So Sierpinski decided to go to Krakóv to study for his doctors degree. He received his doctors degree and was elected to the University of Lvov in 1908.

When World War I started in 1914, Sierpinski and his family were in Russia. He was froced to stay there there for a while, and then was finally able to go to Moscow. Sierpinski spent the rest of the World War I in Moscow, working with Luzin. Together they began the study of analytic(pertaining to or proceeding by analysis) sets. In 1916, during his time in Moscow, Sierpinski gave the first example of an absolutely normal number.

In 1919, he was promoted to professor at Warsaw, and he spent the rest of his life there. In 1920, Sierpinski and an old student he taught (Mazurkiewicz) published the important mathematics journal “Fundamenta Mathematica”.

Sierpinski also helped with the development of mathematics in Poland alot. Sierpinski was elected to the Polsih academy and was made dean at the University of Warsaw in the same year 1921. In 1928 he became vice-chairman of the Warsaw Scientific Society. Also, in 1928 he was elected chairman of the Polish Mathematical Society.

Life in Warsaw was changed a lot because of the start of World War II. Although the war was going on Sierpinski kept working in the "Underground Warsaw University", but his real job was a clerk in the council offices in Warsaw.

“Sierpinski was the author of the incredible number of 724 papers and 50 books”. He retired in 1960 he was the professor at the University of Warsaw. He continued to give many speeches on the theory of numbers at the Polish Academy of Sciences until 1967. He received a great amount of honours that it would be very hard to mention them all, some of them include: “honorary degrees from the universities Lvov, St Marks of Lima, Amsterdam, Tarta, Sofia, Prague, Wroclaw, Lucknow, and Lomonosov of Moscow”.

He was elected to the “Geographic Society of Lima, the Royal Scientific Society of Liège, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the national Academy of Lima, the Royal Society of Sciences of Naples, the Accademia dei Lincei of Rome, the German Academy of Science, the American Academy of Sciences”.

One of the things that we remember the most about Waclaw Sieroinski is that he made the amazing sierpinski triangle that goes on for infinity. He has so many achievements, involving fractals that it will amaze you. Anybody who has taken a look at fractals would have to think about him, because half of the fractal world would not be here today if it wasnt for that amazing talents of Waclaw Sierpinski.

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