Zygfryd Kominek, a Mathematician, a Teacher, a Friend

For the first time I heard about a young mathematician of the name Zygfryd Kominek was in early 1970’s when I was a student of mathematics at the Silesian University in Katowice. I had friends studying physics at the same university, and one day I was told by one of them, that they had the calculus course with a guy who went in a military uniform. That was Zygfryd, who then performed military service, or rather a complement to it allowing him to be promoted to officer’s level. Not that he wanted it but that was in times of communist Poland where the military service was mandatory (students used to perform it during Summer holidays), and fresh PhD’s were proposed to make an additional service this was the case of Dr. Kominek. Later I met him personally, first indirectly (I used to have classes with Bożena Szymura