Wladyslaw Natanson

Władysław Natanson was a Polish physicist who was the head of Theoretical Physics at Kraków University from 1899 to 1935. He published a series of papers on thermodynamically irreversible processes, gaining him recognition in the rapidly growing field. He was the first to consider the distinguishability of energy quanta in the statistical analysis of elementary processes, a precursor of the concept of quantum indistinguishability. He discovered a quantum statistics, rediscovered 11 years later by Satyendra Nath Bose and generalized by Albert Einstein – the Bose–Einstein statistics. He also contributed to the fields of kinetic theory of gases, electron theory, radiation theory, and optics. He wrote several books and articles on physics, both for specialists and general audiences. He was a member of the Polish Academy of Learning and many foreign scientific societies. He was also a rector of the Jagiellonian University and a victim of a bomb attack in 1923, which was possibly related to his opposition to the numerus clausus policy that aimed to limit the number of Jewish students. He died in 1937 at the age of 72.