Vivat Professor Jan Strelau
On 28 April, Prof. Jan Strelau was awarded honoris causa honorary doctorate by the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, at which he has worked for 15 years. It is another addition to a long list of distictions received by Prof. Strelau – a scientist devoted to research on temperament, member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, honorary Editor-in-Chief of Academia, the magazine of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Professor Jan Strelau has raised several generations of psychologists. His cornerstone achievement was the discovery of the influence of temperament on differentiation of working styles. Studies on the function of temperament in the psychological development of a person allowed for demonstrating the links between temperament and personality. Prof. Strelau’s team’s approach to research on temperament has been labelled “the Warsaw school of temperament”.
In the laudation, Prof. Andrzej Eliasz highlighted Prof. Strelau’s contribution to contemporary psychology, especially formulating the regulative theory of temperament, which is known world-wide. Not only his professional achievements, but also his personality was briefly described, characterized by remarkable diligence and orderliness. For many years, Prof. Strelau used to close his daily cycle of scientific work at the time when others would start their day. His early-morning work sessions were not interrupted even during vacation. The high expectations that he had toward himself were translated into expecting involvement and reliability of others. In addition, Prof. Strelau has always been a true leader. The meaning of the special relationship between master and disciples, only rarely seen these days in student-teacher relations at universities, was underlined by Prof. Strelau in his speech.
Anna Kilian
Photos by Jakub Ostałowski
