Professor Jerzy Andrzej Chmurzyński, ethologist and philosopher, founder of the famous ethological seminars of the Nencki Institute, Founder President of the Polish Ethological Society, celebrated his 90th anniversary on 11th March 2019. To commemorate the occasion, on Saturday 23rd March 2019, the Nencki Institute hosted a scientific session „Ethology and more".
The session was organized by the Polish Ethological Society and Nencki Institute. Unfortunately, due to health problems, Professor Chmurzyński was unable to be present at the Institute, but he watched the proceedings of the session online, and during the final part of the session, he discussed with participants via Skype.
The Organising Committee included five members of the team of the Laboratory of Ethology at the Nencki Institute, Prof. Ewa J. Godzińska, Dr. Julita Korczyńska, Dr. Anna Szczuka, Beata Symonowicz, M.Sc., and Łukasz Zywar, and additionally also Prof. Marek Kozłowski (Warsaw University of Life Sciences) and Dr. Anna Reinholz (Department of Animal Psychology, Faculty of Psychology at the University of Warsaw). The session was attended by 38 participants from Warsaw and its surroundings, Poznań, and Wrocław.
The session was opened with an entertaining recording of greetings by Prof. Chmurzyński. Four commemorative lectures were then delivered by Prof. Leszek Kuźnicki, Prof. Ewa J. Godzińska, Prof. Marek Kozłowski, and a well-known broadcast journalist, Małgorzata Kownacka. Participants of the session also watched the movie „There is such a wasp” presenting field experiments of young J. A. Chmurzyński, devoted to the mechanisms underlying the ability of the digger wasps (Bembix rostrata) to return to the nest, along with several other short movies, showing these insects that have been realised recently by Maria Habrowska. Prof. E. J. Godzińska read a humorous poem, written by Prof. Jerzy Vetulani, which celebrated the 80th anniversary of Prof. Chmurzyński in 2009. After a short break, four further lectures, devoted to the scientific interests of the professor, were delivered by Dr. Sławomir Lux, Prof. Bogdan Sadowski, Prof. Krzysztof Turlejski and Prof. Tadeusz Kaleta. The session was also attended by many other prominent Polish biologists, including Prof. Tadeusz Jezierski, Prof. Jerzy Moraczewski, Prof. Barbara Oderfeldt-Nowak, Prof. Joanna Pętal-Figielska, Prof. Lech Wojtczak and Prof. Jerzy Woyke.