Prof. Marian Grynberg

Prof. Marian Grynberg was born on April 11, 1940, and died on November 19, 2017, in Warsaw. He was affiliated with the Department of Physics at the University of Warsaw for more than 50 years. He was a physicist who specialized in solid-state physics, particularly in the physics of semiconductors. As a long-time university professor, he became an educator of many generations of researchers.

He graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Warsaw in 1962. He obtained his doctorate in 1966, his habilitation in 1973, became an associate professor in 1980 and a full professor in 1989.
After graduating, he began working at the Institute of Experimental Physics at the University of Warsaw, where he served as head of the Solid State Physics Department from 1984 to 2003. From 1981 to 1984, he was the director of the Institute of Experimental Physics at the University of Warsaw, and from 1978 to 1980, he was the deputy director of the Institute of Experimental Physics.

In 1971–1972 and 1980–1981, he completed research internships at the University of Paris, and in 1987–1988 at the University of Grenoble. He was a member of the Warsaw Scientific Society. From 1984, he was a member of the Commission on Semiconductor Physics of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), and from 1987 to 1993, he was its secretary. From 1990 to 1996, he was chairman of the Ministry of Education's Expert Team for Exact Sciences. Also from 1990, he was one of the editors of the journal Solid State Communications and a member of the editorial board of the journal Materials Science & Engineering B Solid State Materials for Advanced Technology.

From 1992 to 2005, he served as Vice-President of the Foundation for Polish Science, being one of the people who shaped its mission and made it a pioneer of a new model of science funding in Poland, an efficiently managed institution, open to the needs and voice of the scientific community. Professor Grynberg was responsible for the Foundation’s programme activities, i.e. the practical implementation of programmes supporting scientists. His vision and work in bringing it to life created mechanisms for supporting scientists using competitive procedures based on standards of transparency, competitiveness and high ethical requirements. He paid particular attention to the scholarship programme for young scientists launched in 1995, which financed their postdoctoral internships at the best research centres in the world. It was one of the first such programmes financed by a Polish institution after 1989.

In 2005, he was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.

He was buried on 30 November 2017 at the Jewish Cemetery on Okopowa Street in Warsaw.