LAUDATIO: to Professor Marek Pawlikowski, outstanding endocrinologist and great humanist, on his 70th birthday and 50th anniversary of scientific and didactic activity.

Professor Marek Pawlikowski was born on December 31st, 1933 in Poznan. In 1951 he joined the Medical Faculty, Silesian Medical Academy in Zabrze-Rokitnica where his father professor Tadeusz Ewaryst Pawlikowski had become the head of the Chair of Histology and Embryology. As an undergraduate student, he started his research in the Department of Anatomy in October 1953, as a junior assistant, and in 1956 he published the first paper in Folia Morphologica (1956; 7:225). He gained his M.D. in 1957. In 1958 Marek Pawlikowski moved to Lodz where from 1958 to 1964 he served as an assistant in the Department of Endocrinology, Medical Academy of Lodz (presently Medical University of Lodz). On the basis of the thesis on innervation of endocrine glands he obtained Ph.D. in 1960 in Silesian Medical Academy, and in 1964 he obtained a doctor habilitatus (docent) degree in Medical Academy of Poznan after the presentation of the thesis on peripheral neurosecretion. In 1974 Marek Pawlikowski received the title of professor, and was at that time the youngest professor in Polish medicine.