Director: Krystyna Grodzińska
Deputy Director: Adam Kotarba
Secretaries: Kazimierz Strzałka, Andrzej Zuber

Class IV Members

   PAU Class IV brings together representatives of the biological, agricultural, and geological sciences.  The lectures at the Class's meetings, typically held jointly with the PAU Class of Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry, and the Class of Medicine, have dealt with current interdisciplinary problems in biology and earth sciences.  In addition to Polish members, the lecturers have included foreign members of the Academy, such as Andrzej Bartke (Carbondale, Illinois, USA), and Otton H. Walliser (Göttingen).

   The Class has also taken part in organising symposia, e.g. the National Conference on Cell Biology (1996) and the International School on the Biophysics of Membrane Transport (1997).

   Particulary noteworthy is the study by Andrzej Falniowski, Ways and Byways in the Evolution of Mollusks (2001), which appeared in the Class's series of Papers.

Commissions in Class IV:

PAU Commission on Geoinformation
PAU Commission on Quaternary Palaeogeography
PAU Commission on Embryology and Morphology
PAU Commission on Agricultural, Forestry and Veterinary Sciences

PAU Commission on Geoinformation

Chairman: Józef Jachimski
Deputy Chairmen: Jan Olędzki, Marian Noga
Secretary: Ryszard Ślusarczyk
Delegate for Publications: Krystian Pyka

   This Commission was founded in 1998.  Its focus of interests, in keeping with the definition of geoinformation, is methodology og collecting, storing, analyzing, and presenting data pertaining to terrestrial time and space, using the appropriate information technology.  This involves information regarding the Earth itself and the objects, phenomena, and processes encountered on and beneath the surface of the Earth.

   Research topics may include the physical environment and its properties, or natural and anthropogenic resources, as well as the changes taking place in these resources.  Due to the composite nature of the discipline, the Commission includes geologists, geophysicists, geodetic scientists, specialists in photogrametry and teledetection, representatives of mining-related sciences, information specialists, and geographers.

   The main task of the Commission is to facilitate the exchange of experiences among specialists from different disciplines involved with geoinformation, to stimulate the development of this branch of science, and to promulgate its results.
The Commision's basic forms of activity include holding monthly scientific meetings, as well as organizing or co-organizing national and international scientific conferences.  The results are published in the periodical Geoinformatica Polonica.

PAU Commission on Quaternary Palaeogeography

Chairman: Stefan Witold Alexandrowicz
Deputy Chairmen: Witold Zuchiewicz, Marek Krąpiec
Secretary: Dorota Nalepka

   This Commission was founded in 1979 within the Cracow Branch of the Polish Academy of Sciences, but since 1993 it has been a part of the PAU. Its roots can be traced back to the Committee for Palaeological Research, founded by the PAU in 1928, and to its official publication, Palaeology, in print since 1933. The Commission integrates various disciplines involved in the study of the Quaternary Period: geologists, geomorphologists, palaeontologists, archaeologists, and others. The Commission’s works are published in the Folia Quaternaria. To date volumes 64—74 have appeared under the aegis of PAU publications; these have comprised collections of papers dealing with neotectonics, Palaeolithic settle­ment on the loess uplands of the Cracow region, palaeomalacology, and dendrochronology. The Commission’s meetings have heard papers on the stratigraphy of Pleistocene and Holocene sediments in the light of malacological and palinological analyses, the age of shifts, the conditions for the deposition of lake chalks, and the formation of cave dripstones.

   Within the scope of the Commission’s activities, Kazimierz Kowalski was pursuing a research project on Rodents of Pleistocene Europe (an individual grant from the Scientific Research Committee). The results of this research project are incorporated in volume 72 of Folia Quaternaria and was awarded the City of Cracow Prize.

PAU Commission on Embryology and Morphology

Chairman: Szczepan Biliński
Deputy Chairwoman: Elżbieta Kuta
Secretary: Józefa Styrna

   This Commission, founded in 1996, serves to integrate research on the embryonal growth and morphology of plants and animals. The task it has established for itself is to organize annual national scientific conferences and regular meetings. The Commission is currently comprised of scientists representing all the nation’s leading scientific centers. To date it has organized or co­organized several national scientific conferences and meetings with single papers. The results are published in three periodicals: Acta Biologica Cracoviensia, Folia Histochemica et Cytobiologica, and Folia Morphologica.
The printing costs in such situations are covered by the PAU.

PAU Commission on Agricultural, Forestry and Veterinary Sciences

Chairman: Stefan Wierzbowski
Deputy Chairmen: Marian Tischner, Jerzy R. Starzyk
Secretary: Andrzej Libik

   The Commission’s activities are focused on the organization of scientific symposia, whose materials are published either in the form of separate single­topic volumes or in the series of Works. Currently, the Commission has been working on the issues connected with Polish agriculture, forestry and animal breeding in Europe united in EU.