Zygmunt Klemensiewicz

Zygmunt Aleksander Klemensiewicz ( born April 24, 1886 in Krakow, † March 25, 1963 in Gliwice ) was a Polish physicist, physical chemist and mountaineer.

His parents were the history and geography teacher Robert Klemensiewicz and the writer Maria Josepha, born of Reichmanów. In 1892 he moved the family to Lviv, where he graduated from the university in 1904. 1904 to 1908 he studied chemistry, physics and mathematics at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Lemberg. In July 1908 he earned his Doctor of Philosophy for his work antimony chloride (III) as ionization and solvent, which he had begun in the seventh semester. With a scholarship he attended then the Institute of Fritz Haber in Karlsruhe, and examined the electrical conductivity in gases. 1906 had Max Cremer ( 1865 to 1935 ) observed that consists of glass membranes, depending on the acidity of the inner and outer solution, a voltage as a galvanic cell. On this basis, developed Haber and Klemensiewicz 1909, the glass electrode, which thus led by acid / base titrations and published on 28 January her results. During this time, Søren Sørensen also determined the pH scale. However, it was not possible at this time to find a glass that responds only to hydrogen ions. This was developed in 1930 by Duncan McInnes and Malcolm Dole.

In 1912 he completed his habilitation at the University of Lemberg. In 1913 he received a grant from the Carnegie Curie Foundation for a visit to the Radium Institute in Paris, where he worked until the outbreak of the First World War under Marie Curie. During the war he worked at the Pasteur Institute and in a factory.

1920 to 1940 he was professor of physics and electrical engineering at the Polytechnic University of Lviv. Since 1937 he was chairman of the department of physics, chemistry and engineering.

1940 to 1942 he was deported by the NKVD to Kazakhstan. Between 1944 and 1956 he was in Iran, Egypt and the United Kingdom. He then worked since 1956 at the Silesian University of Technology.

He was married born with Stefania Wieniewski. As an avid skier and climber, he brought in 1913 the first Polish textbook for mountaineering out. Buried it in the cemetery Rakowicki.