Prof. Bohdan Stefanowski – First Rector of Lodz University of Technology, 1945-48
With the help of the residents of Łódź, Prof. W. Iwaszkiewicz and Prof. Jan Werner, and the numerous academics who had already come to Łódź to work at Lodz University of Technology, we began our scientific and organisational work in a team of over 30 independent academics. As a result of joint deliberations, we decided to limit the education of future engineers to only three main faculties and therefore to form three departments: mechanical, electrical and chemical.
Looking back, I could see that the scientific and teaching staff had been assembled and organised according to faculties, that housing and canteen meals had been provided for them, that teaching facilities and working conditions, including the library, had already been provided. So it was then necessary to take care of the future students, according to our resolution to start classes on 25 October 1945. So we placed an advertisement in the then daily press for student enrolment at TUL. The result exceeded our expectations. In fact, about two thousand candidates applied, efficiently and quickly registered by the staff of the Secretariat (...).
In order to bring the young people closer together, as they often came from different parts of Poland, I designed, in consultation with the representatives of the young people, caps in the TUL colours, i.e. in raspberry colour with grey brim, as this was the only material available in that wartime period, and also my son Adam designed a badge of TUL for the students to fasten to their clothes and caps, as well as for the University for its documents (...).
Excerpt from the inaugural speech of the first year of education at TUL (25 October 1945)
Our University is not and cannot be only a school of a higher education, teaching various specialists. This is unquestionably its main purpose, because this is what the life of the State demands. The emptied and devastated workshops of industrial work are waiting for their organisers, managers and technical workers. The University is to provide specialists so that the industrial life, not only of Łódź but of entire Poland, may begin to pulsate more vividly. However, we must not lag behind other nations, imitating their achievements belatedly; we must show creative initiative, enabling us to give new values and bring about progress in science and technology. For this, we need more than just new laboratories. No, that is not enough. The spirit of knowledge, talent and dedication with a love of scientific work must be breathed into dead apparatuses, and favourable conditions created for this – this is the second, no less important task of the established university. Without this, our laboratories will become dead museums and will not be creative.