Pole of the Year 2014

Jozef J. Zwislocki is a Multidisciplinary Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Syracuse University.  He was a distinguished professor of neuroscience and the Founding Director of the Institute for Sensory Research that was dedicated to anatomical, physiological and psychophysical research on three senses, hearing, vision and touch and also included a doctoral academic program.

 Zwislocki was born on March 19, 1922 in Lwow, Poland and attended first  the school of Mrs. Helen  Shalley, a sister of Marie Sklodowska Curie, subsequently, the Gymnasium of Mikolaj Ray, both in Warsaw, then until the beginning of World War II the experimental school of Rydzyna near Poznan.  Occupation of Poland by Hitler’s and Stalin’s troops forced him to flee with his grandfather Ignacy Moscicki (President of Poland) to Switzerland.  Here, he attended the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology from which he obtained a degree of an electrical engineer and, subsequently, of a Dr. of Technical Sciences.  His interests changed at that time and he accepted a research position in the Department of Otolaryngology in the Medical School  of the University of Basel.  At that position, he invented a new diagnostic method for auditory disorders and discovered two previously unknown auditory phenomena.  His innovative doctoral dissertation earned him an invitation to the First Speech Communication Conference at MIT and a position of a Research Fellow at the famous Psychoacoustic Laboratory of Harvard.  He remained there 6 years making several experimental discoveries accompanied by mathematical theories.  The discoveries provided a base for a new diagnostic methodology still used throughout the world.  At the end of his tenure at Harvard, he accepted a dual faculty position at the Gordon D. Hoople Hearing and Speech Center and the Department of Electrical Engineering of Syracuse University.  The dual position allowed him to create in turn a Bioacoustic Laboratory, a Laboratory of Sensory Communication and, in the end, The Institute for sensory Research.  The institute was dedicated to anatomical, physiological and psychological research on three sense modalities – hearing, vision and touch  and included a doctoral academic program.  Based on his research, Zwislocki authored over 200 scientific articles and 2 state-of the art books.  He was a member of a number of scientific societies in some of which  he was elected to administrative positions.  He was elected to the U.S.A and Polish Academies of Science, received two doctorates h. c., one from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan and one from Syracuse University, and was awarded numerous scientific prizes.

He resides with his wife in Fayetteville, NY.