Leon Jesmanowicz's Story
Professor Jesmanowicz was born in 1914 in Deja in the Vilnius
region. In the years 1933-1937 he studied in faculty of Mathematics
and Natural Science at the Batory University in Vilnius. For the
first two years he studied drawing in the Faculty of Fine Arts in
parallel to mathematics. Until the outbreak of world war II he
worked as a junior assistant in the Department of Mathematics under
the direction of Professor Antoni Zygmund. During the German
occupation he conducted clandestine study groups.In 1945 he left Vilnius as a repatriate and took up a post in the Department of Mathematics at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin. In 1946 he settled permanently in Torun where he was associated with the Nicholas Copernicus University until his death in 1989. For many years he held responsible positions of authority in the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry including vice-dean and dean. He also performed many social duties. He was the long-standing chairman of the Torun Branch of the Polish Mathematical Society and a member of the board. Professor Leon Jesmanowicz had many varied interests. He knew about and had a deep feeling for literature, history and theater. His activity in the field of mathematics had however, from the earliest years, been accompanied by a passion for creating caricatures. In his drawings he represented hundreds of people and groups with whom he had contact in the course of over 50 years. He gained enormous popularity with this activity - even among his models, since he did not accomplish the austere powers of caricaturist through maliciousness but with the most precise observation. The mathematician finds in these small works - often masterpieces - not only the art of sensing the character of a person, characteristic of the author, but also a tendency, specific to the mathematician, for an economy of means and a grasp of the essential traits of a figure. He also finds a wealth of content inherent in almost every line. In the course of the past few dozen years, during every meeting of mathematicians in which professor Jesmanowicz took part, there took place a peculiar kind of beauty contest of candidates wishing to find their way to his collection of caricatures. After the lapse of some time, one can remark that, gradually, the mental image of older colleagues, especially those no longer with us, is becoming more and more similar to the drawing executed by professor Jesmanowicz. Some of the caricatures presented in this collection were part of an exhibition at the Caricature Museum in Warsaw in December 1994. The jority of them comes from the gift which came down by Mrs. Sabina Jesmanowicz, the Professor's wife, to the Torun branch of the Polish Mathematical Society. We thank cordially on behalf of the PTM. S.Balcerzyk B.Kaminski Z.Leszczynsk |