Isidor Isaac Rabi (1898-1988) was an American physicist. Born into a Polish-Jewish family in Galicia, he immigrated to the United States as an infant. They settled in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. As a student at Cornell, he studied electrical engineering and then switched to chemistry. He later became interested in physics. After being awarded a doctorate for his thesis on magnetic susceptibility, he headed to Europe, where he worked with some of the best physicists of the time.

On this manifest from 1929, he’s returning home to the United States after being offered a faculty position at Columbia University. In 1944, he earned a Nobel Prize in physics for his techniques in nuclear magnetic resonance. This became a valuable tool in the subsequent development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a non-invasive medical imaging technique that produces detailed images of internal structures in the human body.

Wilhelmina Iwanowska (1905-1999) was a Polish astronomer and the first astrophysics professor in Poland.  As a student at the University of Stefan Batory she studied mathematics. It was during this time that she became interested in astronomy. In 1933 she earned her Doctor of Science in astronomy and eventually became an astrophysics professor. Her research made significant advancements in understanding star clusters and galactic astronomy.

Photo credit: UMK Archives

Even though she never lived in the United States, she often traveled here as a guest lecturer. On this manifest from 1948, she is traveling to Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. Yerkes Observatory was the birthplace of modern astrophysics with an integrated laboratory space for physics and chemistry analysis.

Henryk Arctowski (1871-1958) was a Polish scientist and explorer. He was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1871. In school he studied chemistry and geology. In 1895 he participated in the Belgian Antarctic Expedition, the first expedition to spend the winter in Antarctica. He conducted groundbreaking studies on the polar climate and geography.

On this manifest from 1909, he arrived at the Port of New York aboard the S.S. Zeeland. His occupation is recorded as, ‘scientist.’ He immigrated with his wife Helen, and they settled in New York City. He worked as head of the science division at the New York Public Library. In 1915, he became a U.S. citizen.