De vita sua

Abstract

The article is an edition of the scientific autobiography written by Professor Edward Potkowski, published from a heritage kept in family collections. Professor Edward Potkowski was born on 10 May 1934. He spent his childhood in Sumierzyce. He was enrolled on history courses at the Faculty of Philosophy and History of the University of Wrocław in 1955–1956. After the first year, he moved to the Institute of History of the University of Warsaw. He received his master’s diploma in 1960 and doctorate in 1967. In 1963–1986, he worked at the Institute of History of the University of Warsaw, where he held the office of deputy director in 1978–1981. From 1986 until his retirement in 2004, he worked at the Institute of Library and Information Science of the University of Warsaw. He was the director of the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw (1981–1986) and professor at the Aleksander Gieysztor Academy of the Humanities in Pułtusk (1994–2012). Professor Potkowski was a member of various national and international scientific organisations. He was the chairman of the Scientific Council of the Faculty of Information and Book Studies of the University of Warsaw (1991–2004) and the chief of the Division of Old Book Knowledge (1994–2004). He was also a member of the Scientific Council of the Institute for the History of Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences (since 1999), the Management Board and the Scientific Board of the Józef Mianowski Fund – Foundation for the Promotion of Science and the Management Board of the Aleksander Gieysztor Foundation for the Promotion of Science. He was a member of the editing committees of “Kwartalnik Historyczny” (1985–2003), “Wiadomości Historyczne” (1991–1998) and “Przegląd Humanistyczny” (2010–2011). Since 1996, Potkowski was a member of the Polish Committee of the UNESCO Programme “Memory of the World” and the Commission of the History of Books and Libraries of the Polish Academy of Sciences (since 2005), the Warsaw Scientific Society (since 1988) and the International Committee for Latin Paleography (since 1997). Professor Potkowski died in Warsaw on 31 July 2017.