Mycielski was born in Wiśniowa, Podkarpackie Voivodeship, Poland on February 2, 1932.
[2] Mycielski received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Wrocław in 1957 under the supervision of Stanisław Hartman [pl].
His dissertation was entitled "Applications of Free Groups to Geometrical Constructions".
[3] Following positions at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, the Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the University of California, Berkeley, and Case Western Reserve University, he took a permanent faculty position at Colorado in 1969.
In 1990, he was awarded the Wacław Sierpiński Medal and Lecture by the Polish Mathematical Society.