One of the three leading members of the Warsaw school of logic during the 1920s and 1930s, Jan Lukasiewicz also developed the first nonclassical logical (polivalent logic). He had a profound influence on the succeeding generation of mathematical logicians by introducing Polishing notation, which became the basis of much of work.

Lukasiewicz, the son of a Roman Catholic Austrian Army captain, was born on December 21, 1878 in Lvov, Austrian Galicia (now Ukraine). He attended the University of Lvov, where he studied mathematics and philosophy and earned his doctorate with highest honors in 1902. Lukasiewicz remained there as a private tutor in logic and philosophy, giving the first Polish lectures on mathematical logic in 1907-1908. He remained there until 1915, when he accepted a position as lecturer at the University of Warsaw, which then was in German-occupied territory.

Beginning in 1910, when he published On Aristotle's Principle of Contradiction, which discussed noncontradiction and...