Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska
Zofia Kielan - Jaworowska ( born April 25, 1925 in Sokołów Podlaski ) is a Polish vertebrate paleontologist, a specialist in early mammals.
Life and work
Kielan - Jaworowska studied zoology at the University of Warsaw, initially on an underground university during the German occupation in World War II, after she had already visited an underground gymnasium. The regular secondary schools and universities were closed at this time by the occupiers. During the Warsaw Uprising 1944, she was a nurse, but was captured and taken to a camp near Warsaw. 1945/46, she was an assistant at the Zoological Museum in Warsaw and from 1948 to 1952 in the Department Paleontology, University of Warsaw. In 1949 she took her degree in zoology. 1953 she was in paleontology PhD (her teacher was Roman Kozlowski ) and was then at the Institute of Paleontology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1957 she qualified as a professor. At first she looked at trilobite from the Ordovician and Devonian of Central Europe. 1958 to 1964, she dealt with the Tongs Palaeozoic polychaetes. From 1956 she was senior scientist at the Institute of Paleontology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1961 she was its director and also a professor at the University of Warsaw, which it remained until 1982. 1984 to 1987 she headed the Laboratory of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Institute. She also taught from 1987 to 1995 as a professor of paleontology at the University of Oslo, at Harvard University (1973 /74), the University of Paris VII ( and at the Natural History Museum in Paris, from 1982 to 1984) and other foreign universities.
From 1963 to 1971 she led a number of Polish- Mongolian expeditions to paleontological excavations in the Gobi Desert. The expeditions brought discoveries and new knowledge about mammals and dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period in Mongolia. Encountered have been the dinosaur expert Teresa Maryańska and Halszka Osmólska to their employees. She herself was concerned particularly with primitive mammals such Multituberculata.
1975 to 1987 she was editor of Palaeontologica Polonica and since 1996 by Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.
She was (as first wife ) on the management committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences and from 1980 to 1989 as Vice President. She is a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences ( 1967), the Norwegian Academy of Sciences ( 1989) and the Academia Europaea. She is a member of the Palaeontological Association and the Norwegian paleontological society of which she was president from 1989 to 1994. She is an honorary member of the Linnean Society, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology and the Polish Copernicus Society of Naturalists. 1980 to 1992 she was Vice President of the International Paleontological Association.
In 1974 she was awarded the Polish State Prize for their work on the Mesozoic mammals. In 2005 she was awarded the prize of the Polish president for academic achievement. In 1995 she was awarded the Romer -Simpson Medal the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, whose glory it is a member (1975).
Some animal species and groups were named after her, as Kielanodon, Kielantherium, Zofiabaatar.
It is equipped with Zbigniew Jaworowski (Professor of Radiation Biology in Warsaw at the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection ) married and has with him a son.