Izydora Dąmbska (1904-1983)

Izydora Dąmbska

*03.01.1904 (Lviv, Ukraine)

†18.06.1983 (Krakau, Polen)

Izydora Dąmbska was born on January 3, 1904 in Lviv. In 1922, she began studying philosophy at the Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv. She was a student and last assistant of Kazimierz Twardowski. In 1927 she obtained her doctorate at the Jan Kazimierz University with her dissertation Theory of judgment by E. Goblot. Thanks to a scholarship from the National Culture Fund, she went on an eight-month scientific journey – she visited Vienna, Berlin, and Paris.

She collaborated with the Lviv philosophical community, Polish Philosophical Society, Editorial Committee of the Philosophical Library of the Society, and from 1937 she became a member of the Board and chair of the section on the theory of knowledge. After the outbreak of World War II, she became involved in the fight against the occupier. During the war, Izydora Dąmbska did not neglect her scientific work. In 1945, fearing being arrested by the NKVD, Izydora Dąmbska left Lwów and settled in Gdańsk.

She obtained her habilitation after the war – in 1946 at the University of Warsaw, with her work on Irrationalism and scientific cognition, published in 1937 in “Kwartalnik Filozoficzny”. She lectured at the University of Warsaw (1946–1949), where she gave commissioned lectures at the Faculty of Humanities. Then she taught philosophy at the Adam Mickiewicz University (1949–1950). She worked as an independent scientific editor at the Library of Classics of Philosophy of PWN.

Izydora Dąmbska, like Daniela Gromska, combined competence in the field of logic with an excellent philological workshop. She started translating the works of Leibniz and Descartes. 1955 – she was then awarded the title of associate professor and the position of an independent researcher at the Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences. It was only in 1957 that she began to teach at the Jagiellonian University until 1964.

In 1969, Izydora Dąmbska, as the first woman in history, was appointed a member of the Institut International de Philosophie, and in 1973 she was awarded a scientific prize by the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation. She was also a member of many scientific societies – Polish and foreign. She was also appointed to the international publishing house Archive International d’Histoire des Idées. Before retiring, she received the title of full professor.

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