Wojciech Rubinowicz

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He was born in Sadagóra, Bukovina, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the son of Małgorzata Brodowska and Damian Rubinowicz, a Polish patriot and an insurgent of the January Uprising of 1863.^[2] In 1908, Rubinowicz began his studies at Chernivtsi University, and he was awarded his doctorate in 1914. In 1916, he began postgraduate studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München under Arnold Sommerfeld and eventually becoming his assistant. In 1918, he became a Privatdozent at Chernivtsi University. Two years later, he took an appointment as professor at the University of Ljubljana, Yugoslavia. He became a professor at Lviv Polytechnic, in 1922. During the period from 1937 to 1941, he was a professor at the John Casimir University of Lwów.^[3] After World War II, starting in 1946, he was professor of theoretical physics at the University of Warsaw until 1960.^[4] He served as president of the Polish Physical Society between 1949–1952 and 1961–1974.

While at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Rubinowicz published contributions to radiation theory^[5] and to three of Sommerfeld’s major interests, i.e., Sommerfeld’s extension of Bohr’s theory of the atom^[6][7][8] and both mathematical physics and diffraction theory;^[9] he carried these topical interests throughout his career.^[10][11] He eventually published books based on his mathematical physics interests as well as diffraction theory: his work on the polynomial method of solving eigenvalue problems in quantum mechanics was described in "Sommerfeldsche Polynommethode"^[12] and his work on diffraction theory, was published in "Die Beugungswelle in der Kirchhoffschen Theorie der Beugung".^[12]

Also while at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Rubinowicz transformed the Kirchhoff diffraction integral into what has become known as the Rubinowicz representation (also known as the Maggie-Rubinowicz representation) for which scalar and electromagnetic fields are interpreted as a transformation of a surface integral into a line integral^[9][11] – an independent and slightly different derivation from that done in 1888 by G. A. Maggi,^[13] one of Gustav Kirchhoff's students in Berlin. Rubinowicz’s form of the representation, as opposed to Maggi’s, is now more commonly accepted.^[14]

The circle of his disciples and associates included: in Lwów Jan Blaton, Wanda Hanusowa, Roman Stanisław Ingarden, Wasyl Milianczuk, Jerzy Rayski, Kazimierz Vetulani; in Warsaw: Bohdan Karczewski, Wojciech Królikowski, Adam Kujawski, Jan Petykiewicz, Jerzy Plebański.

He died in Warsaw, Poland.

• Adalbert Rubinowicz "Die Beugungswelle in der Kirchhoffschen Theorie der Beugung" (1957, 1966)
• Adalbert Rubinowicz "Quantum Mechanics" (1968)
• Adalbert Rubinowicz "Sommerfeldsche Polynommethode: Die Grundlehren der mathematischen Wissenschaften in Einzeldarstellungen mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Anwendungsgebiete" (Polnischer Verl. d. Wissenschaften, 1972)
• Adalbert Rubinowicz "Selected Papers" (Polish Scientific Publishers PWN, Warsaw 1975)