Tadeusz Nowicki

Having graduated from Gottwald Secondary School (currently Staszic Secondary School) in Warsaw in 1977, he began studies at the Warsaw University of Technology where he obtained a master's degree in materials science. He was one of the founders and the first Vice-President of the anti-regime students' organization, Independent Students’ Association (NZS), at the Warsaw University of Technology. In 1981, after the introduction of martial law in Poland by Jaruzelski, he was interned along with other members of the opposition in Białołęka until 17 July 1982. In March 1983, he defended his master’s dissertation written in the internment camp, and after suspension of the martial law, with support from the French Le Goff intellectuals committee, was given permission to go to France to prepare his doctorate thesis at École Nationale Supérieure des Mines (Saint Etienne).

Tadeusz Nowicki began his professional career in 1985 as a researcher in the French Ministry of Industry.

Together with J.M. Penisson and M. Biscondi, he conducted an experiment that involved direct observation of atomic positions in grain boundaries in the presence of foreign atoms, using a high-resolution transmission electron microscope.

In 1989, he joined Comptoir Lyon-Alemand, Louyot et Cie, the French leader in precious metals processing, as head of metallurgical research. After a merger with the American group Engelhard Metals, he became Technical Director of the Platinum Division at Engelhard-Clal, responsible for technical issues in factories in Paris, London, and Amsterdam.