1. Life and career Jacek Fisiak was born in Konstantynów Łódzki in 1936, where he also attended primary school. He went to secondary school in Łódź. He received his MA in English from the University of Warsaw in 1959, his PhD in English from the University of Łódź in 1962, and he got his habilitation (post-doctoral degree) from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (UAM) in 1965. In 1961 he spent a year as a researcher at the University College, University of London, and in 1963–1964 a year as a Fulbright Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles. He began his teaching career at the University of Łódź in 1959, first as an assistant lecturer, then as lecturer and as docent. In 1965 he started teaching at UAM, first as a docent (1965–1971), then as Professor extraordinarius (1971–1977), and from 1977 until his retirement in 2006 as Professor ordinarius of English. After his retirement, he remained at UAM as a senior professor. He was very successful as an academic teacher: He directed 331 MA theses, and 60 doctoral dissertations. In between his activities in Poland, he was visiting professor (of linguistics or of English) at many international universities: in the USA at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, the University of Florida at Gainesville, the State University of New York (College at Fredonia), and the American University in Washington, DC; in Germany at the Universities of Kiel, of Saarbrücken, and of Bamberg; in Austria at the University of Vienna; in Switzerland at the University of Zürich; in Norway at the University of Tromsø; in Finland at the University of Jyvälskylä. He also worked, especially after his retirement, as professor at colleges and academies in Konin, Słupsk, Poznań, Łódź and Warsaw, Poland. The main research interests of Jacek Fisiak were twofold: on the one hand, he dealt with historical linguistics and the history of English, including Old and Middle English; on the other hand, he was strongly interested in contrastive linguistics, especially in English-Polish contrastive linguistics, in language contact and linguistic borrowing. A practical outcome of this were several dictionaries (Polish–English and English–Polish) which he published. We have counted 11 books which he authored, 43 books which he edited, 82 articles, and 23 reviews which he wrote (see Writings below, pp. 6–20).
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