Józef Kosacki
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Józef Stanisław Kosacki (1909–1990) was a Polish engineer, inventor and an officer of the Polish Army during the World War II. He is best known as the inventor of the Polish mine detector, the first man-portable mine detector, the basic design of which had been in use with various armies for more than 50 years.
Before the war Kosacki was one of the technicians of the Department of Artillery of the Ministry of National Defence. Shortly before the war he joined the clandestine Special Signals Unit, a secret institute working on electronic appliances for the army. Following the Invasion of Poland (1939) he managed to get to the United Kingdom, where he continued his service in the Polish Army as a signals officer. In 1941 he devised his Polish Mine Detector.
After the war he returned to Poland, where he became one of the pioneers of electronics and nuclear machinery. For many years he headed the Chair of Electronics at the Institute for Nuclear Research in Świerk. Simultaneously he was also a professor at the Military Technical Academy in Warsaw. He died in 1990 and was buried with military honours. In 2005 the Wrocław-based Military Institute for Engineering Technology (WITI) was named after him.
[edit] Name controversy
During the war Kosacki's name had been classified in order to save his family that was left in German-held Poland. Most of his patents were subscribed under a variety of pseudonyms, among them being Józef Kos, Kozacki and Kozak. Because of that, in post-war historiography his surname is often given wrongly.
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