Jerzy Szacki (1929-2016) *87

was a Polish sociologist and historian of ideas. Szacki was born in Warsaw in 1929. After World War II, worked for the Polish Telephone Authority, first as a locksmith, later in a desk job. In 1948, he began to study sociology at the University of Warsaw. Incidentally, his was the last class to graduate before sociology was declared a "bourgeois" discipline and the sociological departments of Polish universities were closed in 1952. Szacki himself was sent to work in the Wrocław-based train wagon factory Pafawag.

In 1956, when the sociological department in Warsaw re-opened, Szacki returned there to obtain a Ph.D. degree. He wrote his thesis at the "Institute for the Education of Research Staff" (Instytut Kształcenia Kadr Naukowych), which was attached to the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party and was soon afterwards renamed to "Institute for Social Sciences" (Instytut Nauk Społecznych), whose director at the time was Bronisław Baczko.

Szacki completed his habilitation at the department of philosophy in 1965. He was appointed "extraordinary professor" in 1973 and "ordinary professor" in 1987, the highest rank in Polish academe. In the meantime, Szacki held various administrative positions at the University of Warsaw, including Vice-Dean of the Department of Social Sciences (1967–1968), Dean of the Department of Philosophy and Sociology (1981–1983), and director of the Institute for the History of Social Thought within the Institute of Sociology (1968–1999). Szacki retired from the university in 1999, but has been teaching at the private university-level Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities since 2003.

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