The author writes about the late Professor Jerzy Szacki, who died in 2016 and was a world-renowned sociologist and historian of social thought. She presents him as a scholar, teacher, citizen, and private person, trying to establish the facts as precisely as possible and placing them in the context of Polish social life from the Second World War to today. She draws on the available sources and on her own memories as one of Professor Szacki’s students and later as a member of the same academic milieu.