Jacek Rajchel

Jacek Maria Rajchel (30 January 1944 – 5 April 2020)

Education and career Rajchel was born in Chełm, southeastern Poland, and moved to Kraków at an early age. He graduated from Bartłomiej Nowodworski High School. From 1962 to 1968, he studied at the Faculty of Geology and Exploration at the AGH University of Krakow, specialising in earth materials. During this period, the university's geologist and archaeologist became his mentor.

Rajchel conducted stratigraphic work on Spitsbergen, the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norway. From 1998 to 2001, he was on the board of editors of the journal . In 2006 he became the chairman of the Commission of Geological Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Kraków Branch. He was given the for his teaching activities and organisational work in the field of didactics. He has received more than a dozen awards from the rector of the AGH University for his researches, academic work and popularisation of geological knowledge.

Death Rajchel died at age 76, after a battle with cancer. He was buried at Rakowicki Cemetery, a necropolis in central Kraków.