Stanisław Pietkiewicz

Professor Stanisław Pietkiewicz Ph.D was born on 28 July 1894 in Cybulów, near Human in Ukraine. He studied at the Technical University in Sankt Petersburg and Kiev. With the outbreak of the I World War he was called up to the army and trained for an instructor of topography. After the war he took a post at the Military Institute of Geography and in 1926 at its Cartography Section. Simultaneously he studied geography at the University of Warsaw under the guidance of Professor S. Lencewicz. In 1929 he received the degree of the Doctor of Philosophy in the physical geography and in 1936 he completed his habilitation procedures on the basis of dissertation entitled On methods of terrain depiction on maps (1930) which included, among others, a proposition of depicting the terrain relief on the Military Operational Map 1: 300 000. At the Department of Geography he lectured on cartography, hydrography, and the regional geography of France where he received a year-long research grant (1929-1930). In 1920 he participated in the demarcation of the Polish-German border in the Greater Poland and of the Polish-Soviet border in 1946. During the occupation he lived in Warsaw and lectured at the underground courses. After the II World War he lectured in Cracow and later in Warsaw and Łódź. He was the founder, the organizer, and the first chairman (1950- 1964) of the Chair of Cartography functioning within the Institute of Geography at the University of Warsaw. Beside cartography he was occupied with geomorphology of the north-eastern Poland; with hydrography that he lectured for many years at the University of Łódź; and with the regional geography of Poland (he was the author of the Northern Poland division into the natural units). In 1954 he received the title of an associated professor. As a cartographer he specialized in the issues of terrain relief depiction on the general geographical maps and in the history of cartography. He took part in six International Geographical Union congresses and in the conference on International World Map 1: 1 000 000 in 1928, in Cambridge. He published the book Climates of the Earth ( 1946); the wall chart Climates of the World (1951); and the textbook Waters of the Earth ( 1958). He was the initiator and the editor of a set of seven wall maps of Polish regions in the scale 1:250 000. He was the tutor of 3 doctor's dissertations and of nearly 100 master's thesis at the Chair of Cartography. He was also an honorary member of the Polish Geographic Society ( 1971) and of the International Cartographic Association ( 1982). Professor Stanisław Pietkiewicz died in Warsaw in 1986.