List of Polish inventors and discoverers

This is a list of Polish inventors and discoverers.

The following incomplete list comprises people from Poland and of Polish origin, and also people of predominantly Polish heritage, in alphabetical order of surname.

Polish polymath Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its center.

Henryk Arctowski was one of the first people to reach Antarctica during winter.

Stefan Banach is considered the founder of modern functional analysis .

Maria Skłodowska-Curie conducted pioneering research on radioactivity and discovered radium and polonium .

Napoleon Cybulski isolated and identified adrenaline in 1895.

Jan Czochralski is credited with inventing the Czochralski method .

Drzewiecki in 1884 built the first submarine with electric battery-powered propulsion.

Kazimierz Fajans discovered protactinium in 1913.

Hilary Koprowski developed the world's first effective live polio vaccine .

Stephanie Kwolek , inventor of Kevlar

Ignacy Łukasiewicz built world's first oil refinery .

Marian Rejewski , Jerzy Różycki , and Henryk Zygalski , Polish mathematician – cryptologists , broke German Enigma-machine ciphers before and during World War II . Sharing their techniques with the British, they enabled British reading of Enigma messages.

Stanisław Ulam originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons .

Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. places itself among the most successful media companies in the world.

Aleksander Wolszczan discovered the first extrasolar planet , PSR B1257+12 .

Ludwik Zamenhof took an attempt to create a worldwide-spoken language, resulting in the invention of Esperanto .