Except members of the Department in Poznan, also the representatives of the academic environment in Poznan were present during the event. The jubilee summarized the achievements of four decades of the Poznan Department. Greater Poland province governor Peter Florek wished researchers associated with PAN (Polish Academy of Sciences) every success. He handed the President of the Department Professor Roman Słowinski the commemorative Celichowski medal.
Institutes and laboratories of the Poznan Academy of Sciences focuses 19 research units: eight institutes (including 2 departments), three works, five laboratories and three other institutions, gathering over 1300 employees. Among this group, 300 people are employees of Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center. PSNC, which is worth mentioning is the leader among the scientific R & D units in Greater Poland in terms of participation in FP7 projects. Grzegorz Ganowicz – Chairman of the Council of the City of Poznań, present at the jubilee – noted that long-term cooperation of the city with PSNC resulted in, among others, choice of Poznan as a host of COP14 International Conference (2008), TERENA conference (2005) and Future Internet Assembly (2011).
Poznan Department of the Polish Academy of Sciences was founded in 1972. The initiators of the establishment were members of the Polish Academy of Sciences: prof. Gerard Labuda, a prominent historian of the beginnings of the Polish state, medievist of slavic history, an expert on the history of the western Slavs, Rector of the Adam Mickiewicz University in the years 1962-1965 and President of the Polish Academy of Sciences (1989-1994), prof. Maciej Wiewiorowski, an eminent chemist, professor at UAM, founder and long-time head of Stereochemistry Natural Products Laboratory of PAN, later transformed into the Department and the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, and Professor. Wladyslaw Wegorek, an eminent entomologist, founder and long-time director of the Institute of Plant Protection and August Cieszkowski Agricultural University rector in the years 1959-1965. Prof. Gerard Labuda became the first chairman of the Department. Soon after the foundation of the Department of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Poznan, Greater Poland began to form PAN scientific units run by eminent scientists, members of the Academy of Sciences. In a short time a high level of scientific research has been reached, forming independent institutes and establishments.
