Lipski graduated from the Program of Fundamental Problems of Technology, at the Warsaw Technical University. He received Ph.D. in computer science at the Computational Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences, under supervision of Prof. Wiktor Marek. The dissertation title was: 'Combinatorial Aspects of Information Retrieval'. His habilitation was granted by the Institute of Computer Science of Polish Academy of Sciences. Lipski spent academic year 1979/1980 at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and the last two years before his death, at the University of Paris. Jointly with his doctoral student, Tomasz Imielinski, Lipski investigated foundations of treatment of 'Incomplete Information in Relational Databases'. The results of these investigations were published in the bibliographical items in the period of 1978 through 1985. This collaboration produced a fundamental concept that became later known as Imieliński-Lipski Algebras. Again, in collaboration with Imielinski, Lipski studied the semantical issues of relational databases. These investigations were based on the theory of cylindric algebras, a topic studied within Universal Algebra. According to Van den Bussche, the first people from database community to recognize the connection between Codd's relational algebra and Tarski's cylindric algebras were Witold Lipski and Tomasz Imieliński, in a talk given at the very first edition of PODS, in 1982. Their work,"The relational model of data and cylindric algebras" was later published in 1984. Additionally, Lipski contributed to the research in the area of algorithm analysis, specifically - by discovering a number of efficient algorithms applicable in the analysis of VLSI devices, time-sharing in database implementations, computational geometry. Lipski was an author of a book on combinatorial algorithms, Combinatorics for Programmers. This book has had two editions and it was also translated in Russian. Additionally, jointly with Wiktor Marek, Lipski published a monograph on Combinatorial analysis.
Personal
Witold Lipski Jr. is survived by two children, Dr. Kasia Lipska, endocrinologist, and Dr. Witold Lipski, neuroscientist. Father of Witold Lipski Jr. was a well-known economist and politician :pl:Witold Lipski |Witold Lipski Sr.. Lipski died in Nantes, France, after a long battle with cancer. He is buried at Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw, Poland,.
Witold Lipski Prize is the most prestigious award for young Computer scientists in Poland. Many are inspired by a brilliant career of Witold Lipski whose life was cut shot by a terminal illness. The Prize is awarded for achievements in the area of theoretical and applied Computer Science. It has been created by the initiative of a group of Polish Computer Scientists active outside of Poland and in Poland. The submissions for the Prize are limited to applicants with exceptional accomplishments, who are younger than 30, or who are younger than 32, in case if a candidate was on maternity/paternity leave. The Prize is administrated by the Foundation for Computer Science Research, in cooperation with Polish Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery, and Polish Computer Science Society.
