Ignacy Mo?cicki
(born Dec. 1, 1867, Mierzanow, Pol.,
Russian Empire
[now in Poland]?died Oct. 2, 1946, Versoix, Switz.) was a Polish statesman, scholar, and scientist, who, as
president
of the Polish republic, was a supporter of the dictatorship of
Jozef Piłsudski.
Mo?cicki was educated as a chemist. He joined the Polish
Socialist Party
in the early 1890s and was involved in an attempt on the life of the governor-general of
Warsaw
. Sought by the Russian police for that involvement, Mo?cicki fled to England (1892), where he met Piłsudski.
Returning to the European continent, in 1897 Mo?cicki began to teach at the Roman Catholic university in Fribourg, Switz. In 1912 he was given the professorship of
electrochemistry
at the University of Lemberg (Polish: Lwow). After
World War I
Mo?cicki served the new Polish state by restoring
synthetic
nitrogen production at Krolewska Huta (now Chorzow), Upper Silesia, at a plant that had been stripped by the Germans.
After the Piłsudski
coup d’etat
in May 1926, Mo?cicki was elected as president of the republic in June, in which post he served Piłsudski faithfully. He served another term as president from 1933. Following Piłsudski’s death in 1935, Mo?cicki’s politics became much more liberal. After the German and Soviet occupation of
Poland
in September 1939, Mo?cicki fled to
Romania
, where he was interned briefly, and thence to
Switzerland
, where he resided until his death.