Ostatnie lata życia Benedykta Dybowskiego (1833-1930) w świetle korespondencji z Januszem Domaniewskim (1891-1954) - przyczynek do biogramu

An outstanding zoologist, a propagator of Darwinism and a social activist. He graduated from the universities in Dorpat and Breslau (currently Wroclaw), and then obtained doctorate at the University of Berlin (1860). From 1861, he worked as a professor of zoology at the Warsaw Main School. As a participant in the clandestine movements for the independence of Poland, the January 1863 insurgent and the commissioner of the National Government for Lithuania and Belarus, he was arrested and sentenced in the Romuald Traugutt trial to 12 years of hard labor at Lake Baikal. Despite difficult living conditions there, he conducted faunistic and geographical research while in exile, between 1864 and 1868. In recognition of his scientific merits, he was released. This enabled him to continue research on Lake Baikal and to participate in another expedition. Between 1872 and 1875, he undertook a research expedition along the Amur river to the Japan Sea, together with Michal Jankowski (1842-1912) and Wiktor Godlewski (1833-1900). Later on, he worked as a doctor in Kamchatka between 1879 and 1882, while conducting natural and ethnographic research. In the period 1882 - 1906, which ended with his retirement, he headed the Zoology Department at the University of Lvov. For the next 25 years, until his death in 1930, he continued active scientific and social activities, mainly as an author of original scientific studies and a journalist. After 1918, involved in the independence movement, he actively joined the organization of Polish scientific institutions, including National Natural History Museum in Warsaw, as well as teaching and popularizing zoology. Throughout his life, he tried to participate in building a "better society", actively promoting abstinence and hygiene of life, Esperanto as an international language of peace, fighting for women's rights and justice. An atheist and opponent of both religions and churches. From a scientific point of view, he is world famous for describing several hundred species new to science, mainly from shells, molluscs, fish, amphibians and birds. He also gained recognition for drawing attention to the nature of the Lake Baikal and its endemic fauna. Benedykt Dybowski was one of the pioneers of hydrobiological research and one of the creators of limnology: he distinguished faunal communities, and took into account the results of original research on bottom samples, as well as geophysical data. His biogeographic hypotheses point to the historical migration routes of Asian species, as well as to the relationship between geographical isolation and the speciation of the Kamchatka fauna. He conducted a number of successful acclimatization experiments. The results of natural, anthropological and ethnological studies he published in over 400 papers, and at the same time, he collected and transferred to museums many specimens, valuable research materials, which remain used by the international scientific community to this day.