Jan Czekanowski

Czekanowski, Jan 

Born Oct. 6, 1882, in Ghichów; died July 20, 1965, in Szczecin. Polish anthropologist and ethnologist. Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences (1924).

Czekanowski studied in Warsaw and Libau (now Liepája, Latvian SSR) and at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. He received the degree of doctor of sciences in 1906. From 1906 to 1910, Czekanowski was on the staff of the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin; he spent the years 1907 to 1909 on a German expedition to Central Africa. He was a curator of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences from 1911 to 1913 and a professor of anthropology at the University of Lwow (L’vov) from 1913 to 1941. Between 1945 and 1949 he taught at the Catholic University of Lublin. He became a professor of anthropology in Poznañ in 1946.

Czekanowski’s principal works deal with the ethnic composition of Europe and Central Africa, the anthropology of Poland and the eastern Baltic regions, the analysis of races, and the question of the origin of the Slavs and other Central European peoples. Czekanowski was mistaken in some of his ideas about race.

WORKS

Forschungen in Nil-Kongo–Zwischengebiet, vols. 1–5. Leipzig, 1911–27.
Wstep do historii Slowian, 2nd ed. Poznañ, 1957.

REFERENCES

Alekseev, V. P. “Pamiati lana Chekanovskogo.” Voprosy antropologii, 1966, fase. 23.
M. C.-G. “Pr. J. Czekanowski.” Przeglqd antropologiczny, 1965, vol. 31, fase. 2.

V. M. KHARITONOV