at the age of 99 years old. Wacław Tadeusz Szybalski was born September 9, 1921 and raised in the then city of Lwów, Poland, the son of Michalina Rakowska Szybalski, a crystallographer, and Stefan Szybalski, an electrical engineer. He showed a strong intellect and a keen interest in science, even as a young boy and this stayed with him his whole life. Wacław Szybalski received his education at the Institutes of Technology in Lwów, receiving a BS in chemical engineering in 1944. Later on in 1945

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... he received BS in Technical University of Silesia in Gliwice, and doctorate in 1949 in Gdansk University of Technology. The Szybalski family managed to survive both the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Lwów, during the extremely difficult period of World War II, partly due to their involvement in the production of typhus vaccine at the institute of Professor Rudolf Weigl, where many of the intelligentsia of Lwów were sheltered during the chaos of WWII.