Stanisław Plater

Stanisław Plater (; 10 May 1784 – 8 May 1851) was a Polish–Lithuanian historian, geographer, statistician and encyclopedist. He is considered an early pioneer of Polish statistical and geographic scholarship.

Biography Stanisław Plater was born on 10 May 1784 in Senasis Daugėliškis, then within the Vilnius Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Between 1806 and 1815, Plater served as an officer in the army of the Duchy of Warsaw, participating in Napoleon's Russian campaign, and rose to the rank of lieutenant. He also authored the two-volume Mała Encyklopedia Polska ("Little Polish Encyclopedia").

Legacy Plater's publications contributed to the development of Polish geography and statistics in the early 19th century. His Atlas statystyczny and Mała Encyklopedia Polska were among the first systematic efforts to organize and present knowledge about Poland and surrounding regions. Later Polish scholars, including Zygmunt Gloger and Bolesław Olszewicz, cited his work as foundational for national cartography and encyclopedic science. His combination of historical and statistical approaches anticipated methods used by later 19th-century Polish geographers.