Romuald W. Marczyński

Primary creator of the EMAL machine designs — Poland's first computers — Marczyński was a professor, mathematician, and pioneer of Polish technical computer science. He was one of the first in Poland to point out the desirability of a translation of the French term *l'informatique* into the Polish term for computer science. He graduated from high school just before the civil war.

In 1946, Marczyński became interested in computers after reading an article about the ENIAC machine in *Problemy*, a Polish popular science magazine. He graduated from the Electrical Engineering Department at Warsaw University of Technology in 1948 and began working there as an assistant. At the end of the 1940s, he joined the Group of the Mathematical Apparatus (GAM) at the Mathematical Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS), and worked there for the remainder of his life.

Between 1953–1955, Marczyński was the primary creator of the EMAL machine designs: EMAL1, a binary serial machine, and, with Kazimierz Baakierem, Lesławem Niemczyckim, and Andrzej Harlandem, EMAL2. In addition to these computers, he created the XYZ and BINEG.

He was a member of the Polish Mathematical Society and the Polish Society of Theoretical and Applied Electrical Engineering (PTETiS). In the second year of the existence of that society, Marczyński organized the first scientific conference on "Digital Engineering in Electrical Engineering" in 1962. He was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of the Rebirth of Poland and the Silver Cross of Merit (1954). He died in Washington, D.C. on January 1, 2000.