The 29th Baltic Conference on the History of Science, Vilnius
BIRUTĖ RAILIENĖ
Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, Department of Scholarly Information, Vilnius (Lithuania)
Disseminating the Scholarly Heritage of Vilnius University Professor Jędrzej Śniadecki (1768–1838)
Abstract
A tradition of commemorating famous personalities and their achievements in science in Lithuania has multiple forms, including annual seminars. Though it has been more common to organize annual events for those in the humanities (such as Marija Gimbutienė, Vaclovas Biržiška, and Jurgis Lebedys), we also have annual seminars for engineers (Kazimieras Šešelgis readings), chemists (Lectiones Andreae Sniadecki), among others.
This paper will present a short history of initiatives to preserve and disseminate information about the professor of medicine and chemistry Jędrzej Śniadecki (1768–1838), one of the most outstanding scholars of the old Vilnius University and a famous physician in Vilnius.
Main results:
- Establishing an annual seminar the Lectiones Andreae Sniadecki. The first seminar was organized in 2012 by representatives of the Lithuanian Association of the History and Philosophy of Science and the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences; each year, the seminar is organised in a different historical place associated with the heritage of Jędrzej Śniadecki;
- Translating and publishing famous works by Jędrzej Śniadecki; in 2018, Śniadecki’s Theory of Organic Beings was translated for the first time into Lithuanian (by Irena Katilienė) and English (by Krzysztof Mazurek). This book presents Śniadecki’s ideas about chemical and physiological processes in the living body to a wider audience of contemporary scientists.
- Establishing an annual Jędrzej Śniadecki Scholarship (with a generous grant from Thermo Fisher Scientific Baltics) to encourage outstanding students of the life sciences at Vilnius University;
- Gathering together specialists in the history of 19th-century life sciences for a collective monograph on Jędrzej Śniadecki;
- Joining initiatives of neighboring countries (Belarus and Poland) to organize international conferences and studies of Jędrzej Śniadecki’s scholarly and literature heritage;
- Creating a Jędrzej Śniadecki website with the generous support of Rūta Baranauskienė and Rimvydas Baranauskas: https://andrewsniadecki.org/
