1969, due to
reorganization, several laboratories were created in the Department of Chemistry. One of them was
the Laboratory of Polarography. Dr. Zenon Kublik was named the first Head of the Laboratory.
Kublik was a former student of Wiktor Kemula. They developed the hanging mercury drop electrode in
the late 1950s that helped launch modern electroanalytical chemistry in Warsaw. As a result
hundreds of papers were published in the areas of amalgam electrochemistry, anodic and cathodic
stripping, cyclic voltammetry of inorganic and organic substrates, and electron transfer rate.
Several people who worked in the Laboratory of Polarography are now senior scientists in other
universities and institutes. They include Anna Brajter (professor at University of Florida at
Gainesville), Malgorzata Ciszkowska (professor at City University of New York, Brooklyn College),
Andrzej Lasia (professor at University of Sherbrook, Canada), Marcin Majda (professor at University
of California at Berkeley), Piotr Ostapczuk (Research Center of Julich, Germany) and Kazimierz
Wikiel (Technic, Inc., USA). Kublik retired in 1992. The new Head of the Laboratory, Zbigniew Stojek,
has worked for his Ph.D. under Kublik's supervision. Kublik was active in the research till his
death in 2005. The laboratory got its actual name in 1993.