[1][2][3] Gliwicz was an author and co-author of several hundred scientific papers and publications primarily in the field of hydrobiology with a special focus on behavioral ecology.

He discovered the relationship between the size of filtrator and minimum quantity of threshold food, thus explaining some of the mechanisms of ecological competition and supporting the size-efficiency hypothesis.

[7][8] In 2001, he won Poland's top scientific award, Prize of the Foundation for Polish Science in the category of life sciences, for "revealing the role of predation in shaping animal demography, life histories and behaviour.

"[9] In 2012, he became the recipient (together with Winfried Lampert) of the A.C. Redfield Lifetime Achievement Award conferred by the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography "for their outstanding individual and collaborative research, which has laid the foundations for our current understanding of phytoplankton-zooplankton interactions, trophic ecology of zooplankton, and evolutionary relationships in freshwater ecosystems.

[12] His scientific contributions in hydrobiology have been recognized by scientists who discovered a new genus of diatoms and named it Gliwiczia in his honour.