Seven people of the Lwów School

Stefan Banach (1892 to 1945)

Answer: Born in Kraków on 30 March 1892, died in Lwów on 31 August 1945. His 1920 dissertation defined axiomatically what today is called a Banach space. With Steinhaus he founded Studia Mathematica in 1929. During the German occupation he worked as a feeder of lice for typhus research.

Hugo Steinhaus (1887 to 1972)

Answer: Met Banach in the Planty gardens in Kraków in 1916 after overhearing the words Lebesgue measure. Survived the occupation in hiding under a false identity, then moved to Wrocław. Wrote the last problem in the Scottish Book and started the New Scottish Book in Wrocław in 1946.

Stanisław Mazur (1905 to 1981)

Answer: Worked in functional analysis, summability and infinite games. MacTutor counts 24 problems of his own and 19 shared in the Scottish Book. In 1936 he offered a live goose as the prize for Problem 153.

Juliusz Schauder

Answer: Murdered during the German occupation. MacTutor says that "where and when is not known".

Mark Kac

Answer: One of the youngest regulars. His doctorate was under Steinhaus in 1937, and he left for the United States in 1938. He posed Problems 126, 161, 177 and 178.

Kazimierz Kuratowski

Answer: Taught at the Lwów Polytechnic from 1927 and moved to the University of Warsaw in 1934. Ulam's teacher and doctoral advisor, but he had left Lwów before the problems began to be written in the Scottish Book.

Stanisław Ulam

Answer: With Kac, one of the youngest regular participants of the sessions in the Scottish Café. He took his doctorate at the Lwów Polytechnic in 1933, and left for the United States at the end of 1935.