Stanisław Loria i Mieczysław Wolfke we Wrocławiu – pomost pomiędzy niemiecką przeszłością i polską teraźniejszością

On the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the establishment of the University of Wroclaw, celebrated in the year 2002, the paper recollects the life and work of two Polish physicists, Stanisław Loria and Mieczysław Wolfke, who worked at that university in the first half of the 20th century. Stanisław Loria worked at Wrocław (then Breslau) in the years 1907-1909, after he received his doctoral degree at Jagiellonian University in Cracow (Krakow). Loria conducted research at the Institute of Physics of the University in Wroclaw (Breslau), headed at that time by Professor Otto Lummer. It was during those years that Stanisław Loria met and developed a long-standing friendship with the future Nobel-prize winner Max Born, who came from Wroclaw (Breslau). After the end of World War Two, in 1945, Loria was one of the pioneers of the Polish University of Wroclaw. Mieczysław Wolfke, who studied in Wroclaw (Breslau) in the years 1907-1910 and obtained his doctoral degree at the university there, and then in the years 1911-1913 worked in Lummer’s laboratory, was one of the most eminent Polish physicists of the 20th century. The article discusses his scientific achievements and especially his contribution to the development of optics and low-temperature physics.