Obituary for Jerzy Pelc

Jerzy Pelc (1924-2017)

It is with great sadness that we announce that Jerzy Pelc, University of Warsaw, a honorary president of Institut International de Philosophie and International Association for Semiotic Studies passed away on the 2nd of June 2017.

Graduated from the University of Warsaw, he was a student of such philosophers and logicians as Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Tadeusz Kotarbiński and Władysław Tatarkiewicz. His work revolved around the philosophy of language, semantics, pragmatics, theoretical semiotics and philosophical logic. He developed, among other things, an original theory of uses of expressions (“Studies in Functional Logical Semiotics of Natural Language”, Mouton 1971 and “O użyciu wyrażeń”, 1971). He was the author of more than 100 papers (published in English, Polish, and French) as well as several books. During his life he edited and co-edited several dozen volumes (including “Semiotics in Poland 1894–1969”, Synthese Library 119 and special issues of “Semiotica”). He was also the founder and (since 1970) the editor-in-chief of “Studia Semiotyczne” and the founder of Polish Semiotic Society. He translated into Polish the works of philosophers such as Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, Alozno Church and Peter Thomas Geach.

He was a teacher of many generations of Polish philosophers and logicians.

He will be greatly missed both personally and as a scholar.

Tadeusz Ciecierski
Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw and Polish Semiotic Society