Borsuk

Karol Borsuk

Born: 8 May 1905 in Warsaw, Poland
Died: 24 Jan 1982 in Warsaw, Poland

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Borsuk obtained his doctorate from the University of Warsaw in 1930. He lectured in Warsaw for the whole of his career except for a number of one year appointments in the USA.

His main work was in geometric topology. He founded the theory of retracts and shape theory. Borsuk introduced the important concept of absolute neighbourhood retracts and in 1936 he introduced the notion of cohomotopy groups.

During the Nazi occupation of Poland Borsuk tried to keep the University functioning and was imprisoned. He escaped and remained in hiding until the end of the war.

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. S Mardesic and J Segal, Shape theory and geometric topology, Lecture Notes in Maths. 870 (Amsterdam-New York, 1982). 
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JOC/EFR February 1996