[Edward Grzegorzewski, graduate of the Warsaw University's medical department and first rektor of the medical academy at Gdansk].

Born on October 4, 1906, in Tobolsk (Siberia), Edward Grezegorzewski was the son of an ophthamologist and descendant of a Polish exile to Siberia. Grzegorzewski came to Poland in 1922. He finished his secondary education in Lwow and then studied medicine (1925-1931), first in Lwow and then in Warsaw. He received the degree of doctor of medicine at the Medical Department of the Warsaw University on July 4, 1931. After his internship, he began work as a research assistant at the State Office of Hygiene in Warsaw (January 1, 1932). From August 1932 until January 1934 he was on a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship in the United States. After his return to Poland, he held a number of exectuive positions in the Health Department of the Warsaw City Council, the State Office of Hygiene, and the State School of Hygiene. At the same time he conducted his own research work, concentrating on the socio-hygienic facets of common epidemic diseases and on combatting such disease by means of large-scale action. He was planning to defend his Habilitationsschrift in 1939, but the outbreak of war interfered with his plans. During the German occupation he first worked as specialist in fighting epidemics in Warsaw, and then as a ward doctor at a sanatorium in Otwock near Warsaw. After the liberation, in September 1944, Grzegorzewski he was appointed head of the Health Department of the Ministry of Social Care and Health. On September 20, 1945, he defended his Habilitationsschrift at the Medical Department of the Maria Sklodowska-Curie University in Lublin. In July 1945 he was put in charge of setting up a Medical Academy in Gdansk and in January 1946 became its first rektor (president). In the spring of 1941, Grzegorzewski had received an invitation from Geneva to take part in work on organizing and devising the World Health Organization. After the establishment of WHO, he became head of its department concerned with supervision, organization and training in the field of hygiene. When his term of office expired he stayed abroad, working as professor of hygiene at several universities in the USA, Latin America and Asia. In 1968 he retired from the position of Professor of Hygiene at the John Hopkins University in Baltimore. Edward Grzegorzewski died in Baltimore in 1982.