Protecting science from politicisation

Hanna Dąbkowska
[Letter to the Editor]

It was with great interest and curiosity that I read Mike Glazer's article about Jan Czochralski – the Polish chemist, engineer, inventor and creator of the popular crystal growth technique (the Czochralski Method) – in a recent issue of the IUCr Newsletter.

In 1978 I was involved in the process of acquiring a Czochralski apparatus (produced by Malvern in Cambridge, UK) for the newly created crystal growth laboratory in the Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Science. It was 25 years after Jan Czochralski's death. I was then a newly graduated chemist from Warsaw University and had not realised that Jan Czochralski was a Pole, working in Warsaw (he was a former professor at Warsaw Technical University). I was aware that the name was Polish – who else could pronounce the famous “cz” letter combination? – but somehow I was left to believe that he was an American of Polish origin. His name never appeared in any Polish records. It was not until about 10 years later, after the Solidarity movement changed the political direction of Poland dramatically, when Paweł Tomaszewski and Anna Pajączkowska dared to uncover the tragic Czochralski story. It is all reported in Glazer's paper.

Since then, the recently established Polish Society for Crystal Growth took Jan Czochralski as its patron, the medal in his name is awarded every year and even a short movie about this most cited Polish scientist was created. Now we know that Jan Czochralski goes down in the history books as a great achiever and a patriot, not as a despised traitor.

I am immensely grateful to Professor Glazer not only for reminding the crystallographic community of Jan Czochralski's story but also for his steady support for young, Polish crystallographers whom he traditionally hosted in his laboratory in Oxford in those difficult times, when visitors from behind the iron curtain were not so easily accepted in the free western scientific world.

It is good to be reminded again that science can be dampened – or even destroyed – in an unfavourable political environment. Some of us have nearly forgotten it can happen, some have never experienced it. This article makes us all aware that protecting science from being politicised is extremely important. Always was, always will be.

29 January 2021

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