The Polish scientific tradition started in the Middle Age and was maintained through the times. The Academy of Cracow, renamed later Jagellon University, has been created in 1364, which makes it the second older in Central Europe. Hundred and fifty years later, Nicolas Copernic (1473-1543) was one of the most famous scientists of the history of humanity.

In the XIXth and the XXth century, Poland contributed again vigorously to the development of technical sciences, in particular in the field of radioactivity with Marie Sklodowska-Curie, rewarded by the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903 and the Noble Price for Chemistry in 1911. And there are Polish scientists who decipher in August 1939 the Enigma code of the cryptographic machine of Third Reich.

Among the other contemporary intellectuals and scientists of international fame can be mentionned the philosophical school of Lvov - Warsaw Kazimierz Twardowski, the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, many engineers and builders in the whole world and, more recently several researchers in genetics, molecular biology and social sciences.