Zygmunt Szkopiak

Who was Zygmunt Szkopiak?

Dr. Zygmunt Szkopiak was a Polish scientist, diplomat and historian who from 1986 until its dissolution in 1990, served as the last Minister of Foreign Affairs in the London-based Polish government-in-exile.

Born in Morzewiec, a small village in north-central Poland, 14 km from the country's 8th largest city, Bydgoszcz, Zygmunt Szkopiak was 12 at the time of the September 1939 German invasion of Poland. The Szkopiak family, which included his parents and siblings, was deported to Austria where they spent the war toiling as agricultural slave laborers. Liberated by the British Eighth Army, he and his family received refugee status and were sent to England where he entered the Polish College of the University of London at Battersea, received a doctorate in the physics of metallurgy and joined the staff of Battersea College of Advanced Technology which, in 1968, became the University of Surrey. He authored numerous scientific papers in his research specialties which centered upon stress relaxation and internal friction, and served as editor of a Polish scientific journal and a visiting professor abroad. He also met and married Lucia, like himself, a Polish refugee, whose father was one of the victims of the Katyn Massacre and who reached England via Belarus, the Middle East and South Africa.