... in my childhood and my youth, such a big role was played by two great passions that I had. Namely - this is very funny to say to students today - one of my passions was school, and the other was the mountains.

My family conditions were terrible: it was poverty, there were five people in one room and in terrible conditions; I spent whole afternoons giving private lessons; I was very poorly dressed, I never had good shoes, I never had a decent coat. But above all of that was this passion.

She was a lively and cheerful child, but at the same time exceptionally independent and responsible. That is why she was allowed to sit at the table with the adults, while her two younger sisters and brother took places at the children's table. There was not much money in the house: there was often a lack of food, nor was there enough for clothes, for example Zofia wore shoes sewn from a blanket. She helped support the family by giving private lessons in mathematics.

She taught others for four hours every day, and for the next four, often at night, she studied by herself. Apart from that, she practically "devoured" books. Thanks to the excellent Latin, French and German lessons conducted at school, she was able to read some of the reading material, and she read it willingly, in the original.

Despite all her activities, she found time to look after her younger siblings, as well as to think about their pleasures. - She wrote fairy tales for Wanda, and for me she ran around Krupówki [the street where they lived] and asked in the doll shop if they had any broken toys. If she managed to get one, she tried to fix it in her own way and in the morning I would find it by my bed.

I had no equipment, terrible shoes, some awful trousers pulled out from somewhere, somehow darned - and wonderful experiences in the mountains; wonderful! It is unforgettable!

Without a student house, absolutely without any scholarship, supporting myself solely with lessons, from the very beginning with these lessons, in addition to which I also had to help my mother and younger siblings. As a result, I studied for a long time, because I had to spread out my studies; I could not do it at the same pace as my colleagues who had good conditions.

When I came for my first year of studies at the university, there were no assistants. The so-called "proseminarium" [a pre-seminar], which preceded the recitations, was led by docent Leja. I was in this pre-seminar of his. He was a high school professor and had contract classes at the university. Only when I entered the second year, Wilkosz took care to have two deputy assistants nominated, that is Jan Józef Leśniak (1901-1980) and Irena Wilkosz (Wilkosz's wife who was a mathematician).

Witold Wilkosz was a passionate and excellent lecturer. Working with young people gave him great joy. His lectures were very well attended. He taught a wide variety of topics in an innovative way: set theory, topology, theory of functions of real variables, vector analysis and algebra. ... He was passionate about teaching mathematics not only at the university level, but also at its earlier levels.

[Wilkosz] awakened in us a passion for teaching mathematics, for finding means of good teaching, for involving people in mathematical thinking. He was somehow able to convey this to us, even though he was a man of great imagination; he was also a great humanist, he knew music wonderfully, painting wonderfully, literature. And he was also a mathematician and somehow everything worked well together.

A flight of a dozen or so metres in the air and a slide with an avalanche of rocks to the edge of a precipitous wall ended with serious head injuries and damage to the eye. It can be said that this expedition exceeded the participants' capabilities.

She was a teacher by vocation, and at the same time a scientist observing the process of acquiring mathematical knowledge by students. She analysed the difficulties of students resulting from mathematical content and psychological conditions. With characteristic persistence, she strived to reach each student with mathematical knowledge. The experience gained there was extremely important in her later scientific activity.

Since I managed to bring together only six people in cooperation with me ... this modest number was not enough to quickly organise the area, especially in dangerous conditions of movement. We expanded our group with two dedicated colleagues from among Kraków secondary school teachers. They were Zofia Krygowska and Maria Gołkówna. Both paid for their travels with dangerous typhus, from which fortunately they emerged unscathed.

I not only taught, but I was a courier for the secret school authorities. During one of these business trips to the Vilia River, the Germans locked us up in Tarnów at the station for the whole night, in such a small room, terribly crushed. At that time, the war with Russia was already underway, the Germans were returning from the Eastern Front, swarming with lice; and apparently one of these lice bit me, so that I fell seriously ill with typhus. Later, I was offered such a position in an enterprise, which consisted of many sawmills scattered around the Gorce Mountains, Ochotnica, Tylmanowa, Krościenko. I was to work as an accountant, and at the same time I was to conduct secret education, because the director of secret education in Podhale had to flee (they arrested his wife and wanted to arrest him as well). The school authorities simply sent me there in that role, and I was officially registered as an accountant in that enterprise. And here again the mountains were associated with my activity, because I was obliged to travel or walk all over Podhale to inspect the secret education centres in Rabka, Zakopane, Maków, Jordanów, Ochotnica Wielka near Turbacz. This job made it easier for me, because these were sawmills, so I went to inspect sawmills. I knew a lot about wood!... So I went to the sawmill and at the same time I inspected schools and organised final exams. All of this had to be well supervised.

In the chapters prepared by A Z Krygowska (the majority of them), are found explanations of many of the problems in the methodology of teaching geometry. Various elements of mathematical language were very clearly presented. The complete Hilbert axioms for Euclidean geometry were presented with various modifications and very detailed substantive didactical and historical comments provided. The depth of thinking of the author is evident in the consideration given to the definitions, theorems and their proof, in the analysis and methods of solving construction problems, and in the selection of the considerable material taking into account the needs for the teaching of geometry. It would not be an exaggeration to assert that this was the first Polish work on the didactics of mathematics.

... I often deal with the significance of various forms of pupils' activities in the process of teaching mathematics. This activity should be recognised as a substantive activity, as a process of imagining and conceptualising. This activity, always connected with imagination and thinking, concerns model building, drawing constructions, measuring and transforming. It is done directly on specific models which exist in the surroundings of the pupils. It also means the observation of many real phenomena from the viewpoint of mathematics as well as the simple, straightforward written calculations. An intensive process of imagination is required to solve mathematical problems. It involves the use of real objects (models) and designs directly seen by the pupil but transformed in the pupil's imagination. It also involves the process of direct imagination without the observation of real objects. When we speak of conceptualising, we mean abstracting mathematical operations to create a significant element in mathematical thinking. The aim of the teacher is consciously to organise the pupil's activity, the substantive activities of imagining and conceiving. This is a fundamental element in the teaching of mathematics "from reality to abstraction and from abstraction to practice" - it is the basis of teaching in which an active involvement of students is produced. This will be called the "functional method" of teaching.

Didactics of mathematics is a science whose problems include all issues related to learning and teaching mathematics. Today, it is developing as an autonomous science, although research conducted in this field is largely interdisciplinary in nature. Although the specificity of the problems of learning and teaching mathematics does not allow for their complete inclusion in any of the other already developed disciplines, these problems appear and are most often considered on the borders of sciences as diverse in terms of subject matter and methodology as mathematics, its methodology and history, psychology, computer science, cybernetics, and linguistics. Solving such borderline issues requires the integration of various research methods, from theoretical analyses to empirical methods of various types.

Krygowska stated that if misunderstanding comes to light early enough as the student's error, this is a "blessed error", which can and should be used to make further progress. The teacher should aspire for all ideas and solutions, both correct and wrong, to be analysed and critiqued by the students. This is also a way of establishing the authority of mathematical logics - it should not be the teacher, but the logics of mathematics which decide the truth in a mathematics classroom. It is also worth encouraging students to formulate sentences properly and to use mathematical language correctly, but the main focus should be on making sense of mathematics, not on the correct answer or precision.

She died in her full creative powers, leaving unaccomplished projects, an unfinished book; sketches of talks and papers for CIEAEM-40 [the Commission for the Study and Improvement of Mathematics Teaching] and ICME-6 [International Congress on Mathematical Education] in Budapest where her absence was felt painfully ...