Half a century of 'Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki' - a biologist's perspective

The paper covers only autobiographies and articles published in the Quarterly since its beginnings in 1956 until the year 2005. This restriction is due to the fact that subject-matter of biology in other sections of the quarterly has been very diverse with regard to content and form, and hence too difficult to describe in a comprehensive way. An especially important role among the Quarterly's publications is ascribed by the author of the paper to autobiographies, which he views as having made an original and important contribution to the history of science in Poland. As for articles, their subject-matter centred around the following topics:1- Evolutionism; 2- The contribution of natural philosophers and morphologists to the knowledge and interpretation of life phenomena until the middle of 19th century; 3- The history of botany in Poland and in the lands of the First Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.