Literature, science and the arts

Thanks to the struggle to keep the national spirit alive, and the dissemination of the ideal of work for the good of society, in the late 19th century Polish culture enjoyed a period of dynamic growth. This was an age highlighted by the work of writers like Boles³aw Prus, Eliza Orzeszkowa, Stefan ¯eromski, and Adam Asnyk, and painters like Jan Matejko, Józef Che³moñski, Henryk Siemiradzki, Stanis³aw Wyspiañski, who was also an outstanding playwright. In 1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz received the Nobel Prize in literature. Advances were being made in science: Zygmunt Wróblewski and Karol Olszewski were the first to liquefy atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen (1886). In 1853 Ignacy £ukasiewicz developed an industrially efficient method for the distillation of petroleum oil and constructed the world's first practicable paraffin lamp, and Ludwik Zamenhof created Esperanto and published his manual for this language. The crowning achievement by a Polish scientist was the discovery of radioactivity and isolation of the first radioactive isotopes by Maria Sk³odowska Curie (in collaboration with her husband Pierre), for which she was awarded two Nobel Prizes (1903 and 1911).