Warsaw Society of Friends of Learning

The Warsaw Society of Friends of Learning, known in Polish as the Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk, was one of the earliest Polish scientific societies and was active in Warsaw from 1800 to 1832. It was also called the Warsaw Royal Society of Friends of Sciences, although the word Royal was sometimes left out because it denoted the monarch of the occupying authority. Its traditions went back to the Thursday dinners held in the last decades of the eighteenth century by Poland's last king, Stanislaw August Poniatowski, and from 1824 it was headquartered in the Staszic Palace, which Stanislaw Staszic had bought for it. It gathered scientists, academics, writers and their sponsors, supported research, museums, libraries, education and publishing, kept the greatest public library of former Poland and issued its own journal, the Annals of the Warsaw Society of Friends of Learning. Its members included the Warsaw inventor Abraham Stern. The Russian authorities dissolved it after the failed November Uprising of 1830 and 1831, and its tradition was continued by the Warsaw Scientific Society.