In 2014, to mark the International Year of Crystallography (IYCr), the Polish Committee of Crystallography (a body under the aegis of the Polish Academy of Sciences) organized the first national Crystallographic Olympiad (CO). The prime mover and the first chair of the organizing committee was Prof. Edward Michalski. The idea was to model the CO on the famous Olympiads of Chemistry, Mathematics, or Physics, where high-school pupils compete. In practice, the CO had to be focused on university students because only at this level might decent crystallographic knowledge be expected. This was reflected in the official name of the competition: Polish Crystallographic Olympiad for University Students and High School Students. Over the years, occasional secondary school participants appeared at the Final stage (held biannually in Wrocław, in connection with the annual Polish Crystallographic Meeting), but the overwhelming majority of finalists were university students, for whom at least some formal crystallographic curricula still exist.
This year, at the 7th Crystallographic Olympiad, a “miracle” happened because among the 36 finalists there were 11 secondary school pupils (of whom 10 appeared in Wrocław), coming from all possible corners of Poland, all of them self-motivated and self-educated. Their performance at the final test (which is quite hard) was very good. Actually, one of the pupils, Filip Ćwięka from a secondary school (I LO in Krosno, a small town in southeast Poland) won the Second Prize!
The full list of the six laureates of the 7th Polish Crystallographic Olympiad for University Students and High School Students is as follows:
| 1. Dominik Danilewicz | Jagiellonian University in Kraków | |
| 2. Filip Ćwięka | Nicolaus Copernicus I LO Krosno | |
| 3. Alicja Prężyna | University of Warsaw | |
| 4. Kajetan Nocuń | Warsaw University of Technology | |
| 5. Szymon Suchecki | University of Warsaw | |
| 6. Zuzanna Gackowska | Warsaw University of Technology |
The six laureates of the 7th Polish Crystallographic Olympiad for University Students and High School Students
1st place Dominik Danilewicz
2nd place Filip Ćwięka
3rd place Alicja Prężyna
With such a rebirth of interest in crystallography among the youngest generation, we may be assured that the fate of our discipline is not as bleak as predicted by some. Probably this is also time to expand the idea of the Crystallographic Olympiad to the Regional and International level.
