In the 19th and 20th centuries, Austria was a major European scientific center and presented the world with many famous scientists. One of them is Jan Nepomucen Franke, a mechanic by profession, a professor with a degree, and he was a doctor of Honoris Causa of Lviv Polytechnic, a member of the Polish Academy of Knowledge. Awarded with high Austrian awards.
Biography
The famous Jan Franke was born on October 4, 1846 in Lviv. At that time, the city belonged to the Austro-Hungarian state and was called Lemberg. The city was completely European. There was no difference with the big cities of Europe: the same houses, the same shops and cafes, the same way of life, life, the same traditions. In Austrian Lviv technical and scientific inventions were born, advanced technologies of that time were introduced. One of the empire’s first gas and, subsequently, electric street lighting, automobile transport, and telephone communications began here.
Jan Franke graduated from high school in Lviv. Then, from 1864 to 1866, he attended two courses of the Lviv Technical Institute (Faculty of Machine Building), now the National University of Lviv Polytechnic, which has a rating of "C" meaning "high level" of graduate training.
From 1866 to 1869, Jan Franke studied at the Vienna Technical University. One of the largest universities in Vienna, founded in 1815 under the name "Imperial-Royal Polytechnic Institute". Currently, the university has 8 faculties with 56 institutes, including 21 undergraduate departments, 43 master's departments and 3 doctoral departments. The university's curriculum and research activity is focused on the technical and natural sciences.
Scientist career
Returning to Lviv, Jan Franke became an assistant in the Department of Mechanics and Descriptive Geometry of the Lviv Technical Institute, which was led by geometer, artist and musician Karol Mashkovsky. At the same time, the scientist gave lectures for chemical students, taught mechanics at the Higher Field School in the village of Dublyany, 6 km from Lviv, which began to operate with funds and under the patronage of the Galician Economic Society on January 9, 1856 to disseminate advanced management methods in field cultivation and forestry. Since 1878, the school received the tutelage of the Regional Government of Galicia and the Sejm and was named the Higher Agricultural School. Since that time, the institution was built on a university model. It opened departments, laboratories, experimental stations, conducted research. Now it is the Lviv State Agrarian University - one of the oldest and most prestigious higher educational institutions of agricultural education in Ukraine.
Throughout the year from 1869 to 1870, Jan Franke studied mathematics in Zurich and astronomy in Paris Sorbon.
Meanwhile, the Lviv Technical Institute was transformed into the "Technical Academy", and the department where Franke worked was reorganized, a new one was created - the Department of Theoretical Mechanics. Subsequently, the department was renamed "theoretical mechanics and theory of machines." The young, then 24-year-old Jan Franke was elected manager. In the future, the scientist repeatedly served as rector of a technical institute (from 1874 to 1875, from 1880 to 1881, from 1890 to 1891). At the end of the century, the "Technical Academy" developed rapidly, responding to the staffing needs of the technical intelligentsia. New specialized departments opened, scientists from other countries were involved. The language of instruction has become exclusively Polish.
From 1876 - Jan Franke is a corresponding member, from 1885 - a full member of the Krakow Academy of Sciences, which consisted of three departments: philological, historical-philosophical and physical-mathematical. Each department has published many monuments and valuable monographs.
In 1880, Jan Franke entered the Polytechnic Society in Lviv. From 1895 - an honorary member of society. By the end of the century, the number and specialization of scientific societies in Lviv increased sharply, as did their polarization on a national basis (Jewish and Armenian societies were exclusively enlightening and charitable). Science, especially socio-humanitarian, was closely linked to national tasks. The Polish scientific intelligentsia in Lviv cared primarily about the national character of humanitarian knowledge.
Jan Franke also served as the regional inspector of real and industrial schools in Lviv. A great contribution was made to the foundation of 10 real schools, in particular, the state industrial school in Lviv and various types of industrial schools in Buchach, Yaroslav, Sulkovichi, Ternopol, Stanislav, etc.
At the post of vice-rector and rector, the scientist saw an insufficient number of qualified applicants who could study at the Technical Academy, therefore, since 1892, as an inspector of secondary and industrial schools, the number of real and industrial schools has increased.
