Hipolit Wawelberg

Wawelberg made a fortune in the Russian Empire, though he was equally well known as a generous philanthropist.

He was also a member of the management board of the Warsaw Bank of Commerce (Bank Handlowy w Warszawie), the treasury of the Jewish Colonist Society in St. Petersburg, an honorable member of the Jewish Educational Society (Obshchestvo rasprostraneniya prosveshcheniya sredi yevreyev), and a benefactor of the Roman Catholic Beneficial Society (Rimsko-katolicheskogo blagotvoritel'noye obshchestva).

In 1875, in Warsaw, Wawelberg co-founded the Museum of Industry and Agriculture (Muzeum Przemysłu i Rolnictwa w Warszawie).

It was in a physics laboratory there that, in 1890–91, Maria Skłodowska (Marie Curie), future investigator of radioactivity and future double Nobel laureate, did her first scientific work.

Wawelberg also founded the Warsaw Mechanical-Technical School in 1895, together with his faithful friend and collaborator, his brother-in-law[2] Stanislav Rotwand (Cтанислав Ротванд), an 1860 alumnus of the University of Saint Petersburg law school.