You are currently viewing Polish Historical Figures: Frankowski & Ulam

Polish Historical Figures: Frankowski & Ulam

In Memoriam: Krzysztof Frankowski | Department of Computer Science and  Engineering | College of Science and Engineering

When he arrived in Minnesota in 1965 with his wife, cat, dog, and a box of books, he did not expect to stay at the University of Minnesota for three decades teaching hundreds of computer science students the mathematical principles that helped civilization advance into the information age. One of Krzysztof Frankowski’s earliest childhood memories was a late night conversation with his father because he couldn’t sleep. Daniel Roksa Frankowski grew up in the family home in Prospect Park. For decades, he led the Topola Choir in Minneapolis and spent hours programming with his son before taking him to rehearsals. He also loved gardening and loved animals – dogs, cats and hedgehogs – which he tended for years and about which he wrote books.

Frankowski is survived by his son and three grandchildren. Krzysztof “Stanislaw” Frankowski, 89, died on Sunday evening, August 22, after suffering a severe stroke nine days earlier. Frankowski was born in Bolimow, Poland, on July 25, 1932, and emigrated to Israel in 1958 and Minnesota in 1965, where he was a founding member of the Computer Science Faculty at the University of Minnesota. The pandemic COVID-19 has had a substantial impact on pupils, students and their families, who have suffered significant porno losses as a result of the pandemic.

Organizations like United Way have set up funds to help college students with accommodation, food, and school costs for computers and distance learning. Universities do not only ask for emergency aid, but also have their own emergency programs for financially strapped students. The University of Central Florida, for example, allows students to defer tuition and housing costs for up to one semester.

Polish cinema

The first video work in Poland was a tape installation from 1973. A collection of poems with a cover designed by Mieczyslaw Szczuka was the first Polish photomontage. More than one hundred important artists from the USA, Europe and Japan participated. Many new artists grew up with the medium, as did artists who had already mastered its use in film, such as Robakowski.

In the 1980s, martial law in Poland killed experimental films and denied access to equipment and facilities. From 1982 to 84 there was an independent studio for electroacoustic music, the Niezalezne Studio Muzyki Elektroakustycznej. There were concerts in churches, artists studios, private residences and student clubs, including Remont, some of which have since closed. Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, Szkice: Estetyczne Aesthetic Sketches, 1922. In 1990 Kluszczynski founded the film and video department of the Center for Contemporary Art in Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw.

Polish Cinema - Local Life

Ulam was a brilliant Polish mathematician who came to this country at the beginning of World War II and became a leading figure in the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Datezone Mexico together with Edward Teller, who worked on thermonuclear weapons development in the middle of the Cold War. It was a top secret project to develop nuclear weapons at the end of the war. The invention of nuclear weapons to end the war was just one of many remarkable things Ulam did. He was one of those amazing people who did significant work in many areas of mathematics, from numbers and set theory to Ergodic theory and algebraic topology.

A never-ending life-work

He had a number of disciplines, including set theory, mathematical logic, real variable functions, thermonuclear reactions, topology, and Monte Carlo theory. The Polish-born mathematician spent most of his career dealing with complex nuclear problems and related mathematical issues, such as supercomputers. In the context of a war project in Santa Fe, NM Ulam performed the required mathematical calculations together with John von Neumann and others for the development of Fat Man Imputership Weapon. 

Working with physicists such as Edward Teller, Ulam solved one of the main problems of working on fusion bombs by pointing out that compression was essential for the explosion shock wave that a fission bomb produced, and that no compression was required. When President Truman announced that the US was developing a hydrogen bomb, he began to calculate how Teller had developed one to work. At Los Alamos, he showed that the early model of the hydrogen bomb was insufficient and suggested a better method.

Ulam’s fellow mathematician Cornelius Everett concluded that the physicist Edward Teller’s design, Superbomb, would fizzle out because it would never work. Teller recognized the problem, but the new system proved a breakthrough, and Ulam found a solution. Ulam and Everett concluded that Edward Teller’s design never worked. 

An important figure

His little brother Adam happened to be a prominent Soviet scientist. In 1943, Ulam was expelled from the Manhattan Project and worked for the Theory Group in Los Alamos. When President Truman announced in January 1950 that the United States was about to make a major effort to develop a hydrogen bomb, he began to calculate how the physicist Edward Teller, who designed the superbomb, would work.

He studied at the Polytechnic Institute of the city and became a member of the famous school of mathematics in Lwow in interwar Poland. Ulams remained at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico until his appointment as head of the mathematical lab at the University of Colorado using the Monte Carlo Xhamster method – solves mathematical problems using statistical sampling methods and random numbers using computer implementations of mathematical software. At the time of Dr. Ulam’s death, he was a professor of biomathematics at Colorado Medical School and a consultant at the National Laboratory. He discussed mathematics, interesting physics and the importance of this work.

Stanislaw Marcin Ulam (75) is one of the country’s leading mathematicians and a key figure in development of atomic and hydrogen bombs. He comes from Lwow, Poland and obtained his master and doctorate from polytechnic institutes. Ulam developed the Monte Carlo method, which allows mathematical problems to be solved by means of statistical analysis. At the age of ten, he entered the grammar school of the Polytechnic Institute in Lviv, where he was interested in astronomy and physics. Born into a wealthy Polish-Jewish family, he studied mathematics at the Polytechnic Institute in Lwow, where he obtained his doctorate in 1933 under the direction of Kazimierz Kuratowski. 

Stanislaw Ulam - Stock Image - H421/0007 - Science Photo Library

Developer

Ulam developed the Monte Carlo Method at Los Alamos to solve complex mathematical problems in systems that used random sampling to evaluate algorithms. Ulam’s invention in Los Alamos was what we now call the “Monte Carlo Method” for solving complex mathematical problems, especially integrals derived from the theory of nuclear chain reaction. He proposed the method for evaluating complicated mathematical integrals derived from the theories of nuclear chain reactions.

Stanislaw Marcin Ulam, 75, one of the nation’s leading mathematicians and key figure in the development of atomic and hydrogen bombs, died of a heart attack on 13 May in Sante Fe, N.M. Von Neumann’s work led to the development of some of the earliest computers, but they were no match for mathematicians like the brilliant Dr. Ulam. The autobiography of the mathematician Stanislav Ulam – one of the greatest scientific minds of the twentieth century – tells a story full of prophetic speculation and peppered with vivid anecdotes.