Stanisław Wawrzyniec Staszic [staˈɲiswaf ˈstaʂit͡s] (baptised 6 November 1755 – 20 January 1826) was a leading figure in the Polish Enlightenment: a Catholic priest, philosopher, geologist, writer, poet, translator and statesman.

He served as a member of the State Council of the Duchy of Warsaw and as minister of trade and industry in Congress Poland.

Staszic is seen as the father of Polish geology, statistics, sociology, Tatra Mountains studies and exploration, mining and industry.

Stanisław Staszic was born into a burgher family in the town of Piła (he was baptised on 6 November 1755), the youngest of four siblings.

[2] On returning to Poland in 1781, he accepted a position as tutor in the house of Grand Crown Chancellor Andrzej Zamoyski.

[2] His Remarks upon the Life of Jan Zamoyski (Uwagi nad życiem Jana Zamoyskiego, 1787), published anonymously on the eve of the Great Sejm, transformed the little-known tutor into one of the chief political thinkers of the late 18th-century Commonwealth.

[3] It became a model for other similar works[2] and began a flood of political books and pamphlets unprecedented in the Commonwealth's history.

[3] Although he preferred republicanism in theory, in the Commonwealth context he agreed that a strengthening of the central (royal) power was the most practical solution for reforming the country, in line with the similar developments elsewhere in Europe.

[7] His Warnings for Poland, coming from the current European politics and natural laws, by the writer of the remarks upon the life of Jan Zamoyski (Przestrogi dla Polski z teraźniejszych politycznych Europy związków i z praw natury wypadające przez pisarza uwag nad życiem Jana Zamoyskiego, 1790), together with his previous Remarks, are considered among the most influential works of the Polish Enlightenment.

[7] In Warnings, he criticised the magnates of Poland and Lithuania, monastic orders and serfdom, and supported the enfranchisement of the townsfolk.

[6] Although he was not a participant of the Sejm, he was an influential onlooker, and through his widely read and discussed writings of the time is recognized as one of the founding fathers of the Constitution of 3 May 1791.

[7] He supported the 1794 Kościuszko Uprising, a failed attempt to liberate Commonwealth from foreign influence following the events of the 1793 Second Partition of Poland, donating money to the insurgents' cause.

[6] After Poland's partitions, in which Russia, Prussia, and Austria seized all of the Commonwealth's territory, Staszic was active in many scientific and scholarly initiatives.

[12][15] After the fall of the Duchy of Warsaw in 1815, he became a member of the government of the newly created small state of Congress Poland (in personal union with Russia), initially in the new Ministry of Education and Religion, in 1816 serving as deputy minister.

Poema Dydaktyczne), a gigantic philosophical essay and poem that is regarded as an important contribution to the history of Polish philosophy.

[18] He was also the protagonist of the Charles Dickens' novella "Judge Not" (1851), and of Hanna Muszyńska-Hoffmanowa's novel "Pucharek ze srebra" (Little chalice of silver).

[14] In April 1951, he was honoured on a postage stamp of the People's Republic of Poland as part of the set issued for the First Congress of Polish Science.

[19] His figure was popular among the Marxist scholars of the People's Republic, who stressed his materialist, determinist and anti-clerical views.