Andrzej Kułakowski

Andrzej Kułakowski was born in Warsaw on 10 August 1929 into a family with deep military traditions. His father, Witold Kościesza-Kułakowski, was a career army officer and had served as commandant of the "Strzelec" riflemen's association for France and Belgium. His mother, Zofia née Twardowska, was an office worker who later took part in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 and was imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. As a boy he attended a school run by the Military Family association. He remained a Varsovian all his life, and the city later described him as a Warsaw native "by birth and by choice".

After the outbreak of the Second World War he completed his lower secondary education at secret underground classes (tajne komplety). He joined the Polish Scouting movement (ZHP) and the clandestine Hufce Polskie, and then the National Military Organisation (Narodowa Organizacja Wojskowa, NOW) and the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), in which he was registered as soldier number 12636. He took part in Operation Tempest (akcja "Burza") in the Janów Forests (Lasy Janowskie). He returned to Warsaw in 1945. Decades later he was awarded the Home Army Cross (Krzyż Armii Krajowej), an honour his colleagues described as one he especially valued.

In 1945 he was admitted to the Stefan Batory State Gymnasium and Lyceum in Warsaw, where he passed his matura in 1948. From 1948 to 1953 he studied medicine at the Medical Academy in Warsaw (today the Medical University of Warsaw). From his third year he belonged to the student surgical circle, developing under the surgeons Jan Zaorski, Tadeusz Butkiewicz and Jan Nielubowicz. On 18 July 1953 Nielubowicz wrote to Professor Tadeusz Koszarowski recommending "Andrzej Kułakowski, whom I came to know during his work in the surgical circle as a very conscientious and careful student, thoughtful and able to look at some matters critically". He later qualified in general surgery (first degree, 1959) and surgical oncology (1961), trained in Oxford, obtained the American ECFMG certificate in the mid 1960s, earned his doctorate in 1964 and his habilitation in 1970.

On 1 August 1953 he joined the surgical clinic of the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Institute of Oncology in Warsaw, then on Wawelska Street, headed by Tadeusz Koszarowski, the founder of Polish surgical oncology. He worked as assistant, senior assistant, adjunct and docent, and in December 1972 succeeded Koszarowski as head of the clinic. He became associate professor in 1978 and full professor in 1986 (Jan Berner, Nowotwory 2009; some press reports give 1993 for his title of professor of medical sciences).

From 1961 he introduced reconstructive operations into Polish cancer surgery and promoted head and neck surgery as a distinct specialty. In 1965 he spent six months in the Department of Reconstruction and Head and Neck Surgery at Roswell Park Memorial Institute in Buffalo, New York, and built lasting ties with the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan Kettering. His surgical work covered breast cancer (modified mastectomy with lymphadenectomy including internal mammary nodes, reconstruction and rehabilitation), head and neck tumours with reconstruction, testicular tumours, soft tissue and bone sarcomas, melanoma, skin cancer and Hodgkin lymphoma, retroperitoneal lymphadenectomy, oesophageal cancer, liver resections, colorectal surgery and limb-sparing hemipelvectomy. He also influenced the development of endoscopy, parenteral nutrition and cancer pain treatment in Poland. In 1985 he received a USSR State Prize for work on cryosurgery of tumours.

He served as deputy director for clinical affairs and, for two terms from 1991 to 1998, as director of the Centrum Onkologii, Instytut im. Marii Skłodowskiej-Curie. In those years the long construction of the new Cancer Centre on Roentgena Street in Ursynów was completed and organ-based interdisciplinary clinics were opened, a model he helped conceive. In 1993 he launched a partnership with Albany Medical College in the United States that created three early breast cancer detection centres in Poland.

He founded the Section of Surgical Oncology of the Association of Polish Surgeons, which became the Polish Society of Surgical Oncology (PTChO) in 1994, and inspired its Geriatric Oncology Group (GONG). He co-founded the Polish Foundation of the European School of Oncology and the Polish School of Oncology. He was president of the Organisation of European Cancer Institutes (OECI) from 1996 to 1999 (the National Institute of Oncology's obituary gives 1997 to 1999), was active in WHO programmes, the EORTC Melanoma Group, the UICC and ESSO, and helped create the World Federation of Surgical Oncology Societies. After leaving the directorship he sat on the advisory committee of the Lithuanian oncology centre in Vilnius (2000), became surgical consultant at the Świętokrzyskie Oncology Centre in Kielce (2001) and advised on research at the Gliwice branch (2002). He wrote or co-wrote more than 200 papers and supervised the specialist training of 18 surgeons and well over a dozen doctoral theses.

Kułakowski held that effective cancer treatment meant more than the operation: it also meant the patient's quality of life, fitness and dignity. In 1972 he created at the Institute of Oncology the first unit in Poland for the rehabilitation of women after radical breast cancer surgery; it later became the institute's Department of Rehabilitation. From 1972 to 1976, under a Polish-American agreement, he and his team worked on rehabilitating women after breast cancer treatment using a programme modelled on the American Reach to Recovery. In 1980 the method "Metody rehabilitacji kobiet po mastektomii" (Methods of rehabilitating women after mastectomy), developed by Kułakowski and Dr Krystyna Mika, was introduced in every centre of Poland's oncology network, and in 1988 the Minister of Health gave the programme a first-degree special award.

Out of this work grew the Amazonki, Poland's clubs of women after mastectomy. The first Warsaw club dates from 1987, and on 16 February 1993 the founding meeting of the Federation of Polish Clubs of Women after Mastectomy "Amazonki" took place at the Centrum Onkologii in Warsaw, with Krystyna Mika as coordinator. The Amazonki gave Kułakowski honorary membership and card number 1. When President Andrzej Duda presented him with the Order of the White Eagle in 2020 he called him "one of the heroes of the Amazonki movement, a co-creator of this association". In a 2025 interview for Stowarzyszenie Amazonki Warszawa-Centrum he described the Amazonki as the largest community of cancer patients in Poland.

Colleagues described his conviction that medicine is above all service to another person, and his insistence on respect for the patient, responsibility and professional ethics. His favourite maxim, which he repeated when he became an Honorary Citizen of Warsaw in 2025, was "warto być w życiu przyzwoitym" (it is worth being decent in life). At the same ceremony he paraphrased the songwriter Wojciech Młynarski: "let us do our own thing, so that it becomes ours".

In August 1980, during the strikes on the Baltic coast that led to the birth of Solidarity, he joined the supporters of the Appeal of 64, the letter in which Warsaw scholars, writers and journalists called on the communist authorities to open a dialogue with the striking workers. Polish Wikipedia lists him among the appeal's supporters, whose names were attached in a supplement to the original 64 signatures. In May 1982, under martial law, he took part in a previously arranged Clinical Cancer Conference in Warsaw attended by a delegation of American Cancer Society doctors, which he later described as the first visit by Americans to Poland under martial law.

He was married to Professor Anna Niwińska. His son, Piotr Kułakowski, is also a professor of medicine; the two appear together in the 2020 documentary about his life. Colleagues remembered his personal culture, charisma, sense of humour and warmth. At a screening of the documentary in April 2025 he joked about his great age and said that, fortunately, he had a family with whom he was very happy, smiling at his wife as he said it. The National Institute of Oncology recalled that he often said he had had a beautiful and fulfilled life.

Kułakowski is remembered as a co-creator of modern surgical oncology and reconstructive cancer surgery in Poland, a builder of the Centrum Onkologii in Ursynów, and a founder of Polish cancer rehabilitation. The National Institute of Oncology called him "our Master, not only in medicine" and said his work lives on "in the walls of the Institute, in its teams, in the next generations of doctors, in the thousands of lives saved". Professor Zbigniew Nowecki credited his vision for the institute's breast cancer and reconstructive surgery clinic, an early version of what is now called a breast cancer unit. OECI paid tribute to him as one of its founders and a former president who helped strengthen European cooperation in oncology. The Polish Society of Surgical Oncology, the Amazonki movement and the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Tribute Society all trace their origins in part to his initiative.

Order of the White Eagle, presented by President Andrzej Duda on 3 May 2020 "in recognition of distinguished services to Polish oncology, for achievements in professional and social work undertaken for the benefit of the country, and for popularising Polish scientific thought in the world". Commander's Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2001). Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1995). Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta and Gold Cross of Merit (Polish People's Republic era). Home Army Cross (Krzyż Armii Krajowej). Honorary Citizen of the Capital City of Warsaw (council resolution 26 June 2025; conferred 31 July 2025). Honorary doctorate of the Pomeranian Medical Academy in Szczecin (2005) and its "Medical Magnus" medal (2005). USSR State Prize for work on cryosurgery of tumours (1985). First-degree special award of the Minister of Health for breast cancer rehabilitation (1988). Award of the City of Warsaw (1999). ESSO Lifetime Achievement Award, as one of the first Poles to receive it. Honorary member of the Polish Society of Surgical Oncology (2000), the Polish Oncological Society and the American College of Radiology (2008). Amazonki honorary membership card number 1. Honoured by the presidents of OECI at Oncology Days in Warsaw (May 2026).

With Tadeusz Koszarowski and Lewiński he co-wrote the textbook "Chirurgia onkologiczna", published by 1982, which Professor Zbigniew Nowecki called the bible of his own surgical training. He also wrote the memoirs "Pięćdziesiąt lat... służby" (Fifty Years of Service, Agencja ATM, 2003) and "Głowy z Wawelskiej" (Heads from Wawelska Street, Agencja ATM, 2004), and contributed historical articles to the journal Nowotwory, including "Moje związki z onkologią amerykańską" (My ties to US oncology, 2008). He co-authored textbooks, monographs and teaching films. The documentary "Mistrz chirurgii onkologicznej" (Master of Surgical Oncology), directed by Andrzej Machnowski, premiered at the institute in 2020 and is available on TVP VOD. In October 2021 he gave the inaugural lecture on the history of Polish oncology at the 5th Congress of Polish Oncology.

The National Institute of Oncology (NIO-PIB) announced on 13 October 2026 that Professor Andrzej Kułakowski had died, aged 97. The cause of death was not made public, and the institute did not state where he died. The institute's directors and staff wrote that Polish oncology had lost one of its most outstanding representatives and that they bid him farewell "with great sadness, but above all with gratitude". OECI, Rzeczpospolita, PAP and other outlets marked his death the same day. Funeral details had not been published at the time of writing.