Marek Jerzy Minakowski

Marek Jerzy Minakowski (born 13 June 1972 in Olsztyn) is a Polish philosopher,^[1] historian and genealogist,^[2] author of the "Wielka genealogia".^[3] Graduated from the Jagiellonian University with the dissertation Formal Logic before Aristotle which was the result of collecting all traces of the use of formal logic in Greek writing prior to 350 BC (book contains a large catalog of all passages, with original text, translation and logical formalization). Being 26 years old, he was one of the youngest PhDs in Cracow.

Soon before graduation, in 1997, Minakowski accepted an editorial post at OptimusNet (now Onet.pl), where he built the leading Polish financial site, OnetBiznes, which by the end of the year 2000 turned to be a most-read source of financial information in Poland. Later, he switched to search business, as a director of Search at Onet.pl.

With this double background (logical formalization of texts and managing large Internet database systems), Minakowski was able to cope with his idée fixe and started building the genealogical database of the whole Polish historical élites.

For the beginning, Minakowski prepared the densely tagged XML edition of Adam Boniecki's Herbarz Polski (originally 17 volumes or 6500 pages published between 1899 and 1913, with genealogies of about 0.3 million people living since 13th to 20th century). The edition is available on CD-ROM since 2003.

The next stage was building a GEDCOM database of all people related genealogically to the icons of the Golden Age of Polish culture: Jan Kochanowski and Mikołaj Rej. The first edition, published in 2005 under the title Ci wielcy Polacy to nasza rodzina. Not only Minakowski connected about 170,000 individuals to both of them, but also found that every fifth person out of 25,000 described in the Polski Słownik Biograficzny is related to them (with a finite chain of three relations: being son of, being parent of and being spouse of).

Currently Minakowski focuses on building the database of descendants of all members of the Great Sejm. He is the chairman (Marszałek) of Stowarzyszenie Potomków Sejmu Wielkiego (the Society of the Descendants of the Great Sejm, SPSW), organization similar to Sons of the American Revolution.

Selected bibliography

• Uzupełnienia i sprostowania do haseł: Łopacki Mikołaj (ok. 1590 – ok. 1648), Opacki Olbracht (ok. 1621–1680), Opacki Zygmunt (zm. 1654) i Radzicki Józef (ok. 1715–1793) [“Additions and Corrections” to the entries: Łopacki Mikołaj (ca. 1590 – ca. 1648), Opacki Olbracht (ca. 1621–1680), Opacki Zygmunt († 1654) and Radzicki Józef (ca. 1715–1793)], in: Polski Słownik Biograficzny, vol. XXXII (1989–1991), pp. XV–XVI and vol. XXXIII (1991–1992), pp. IX–X.
• Is there a logical mistake in Plato’s Meno (89a1–5)? (abstract), in: 10th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, August 19–25, 1995 — Florence, Italy, Volume of Abstracts, Commune di Cesena, Cesena 1995, s. 350.
• Implikacja w węższym sensie wg W. Galeńskiego [Implication in a narrower sense by W. Galeński], in: Ruch Filozoficzny 3–4/1995, pp. 448–454.
• Is there a logical mistake in Plato’s Meno (89a1–5)?, Dialogikon series, vol. VI.
• Attic Greek / Greka attycka [two databases for SuperMemo on a CD ROM], SuperMemo World, Poznań 1997.
• Adam Boniecki, Herbarz polski, 2nd edition recognized, analyzed and indexed by Marek Jerzy Minakowski, version 1.0, Kraków 2003, version 2.0, Kraków 2004 (CD-ROM), ISBN 83-918058-1-6.
• Ci wielcy Polacy to nasza rodzina, Kraków 2005 (CD-ROM), ISBN 83-918058-2-4.

References

External links

• Entry at Ludzie nauki
• Entry at The Institute of Genealogy
• English Summary of The Prehistory of Formal Logic