Adam Adamandy Kochański (1631–1700), a Jesuit and bearer of the Lubicz coat of arms, was a man of diversified interests which by far exceeded the framework of scientific knowledge of his contemporaries in Poland. Kochański was above all a mathematician, but also a physicist, a constructor of machines and clocks, a pedagogue and a librarian.
Already a highly regarded lecturer of mathematics at the Academy of Wrocław, he was introduced to Jan III Sobieski in 1678, when the monarch asked the general of the Jesuit order to designate a preceptor for the eldest of his sons, Jakub Ludwik. In 1680 the famous mathematician arrived in Warsaw, where in 1681–1695 he was accommodated in a professors house and lectured at the Jesuit college. He also acted as the court chaplain and a titular missionarius aulicus (1685–1690), and one year later received also the title of mathematicus regius. The same year (1691) Sobieski appointed the Jesuit his court librarian.
The scope of scientific topics of interest to Kochański included the problem of a universal language, statistics, geomagnetism, construction of clockwork mechanisms, a universal weight as well as the quadrature of a circle and of magic squares. He wrote a treatise on mathematics and a number of innovative papers on mathematics and physics, published by the Leipzig paper “Acta Eruditorum” for which he wrote in 1682–1696. Another one of his works, “Mirabilia Chronometrica”, published in the 9th volume of “Technica Curiosa” by Gaspar Schott (Würzburg 1664), is considered the oldest clockmakers textbook in the history of European literature. Kochański invented the pendulum for a magnetic pocket watch (1667), worked on the construction of a pendulum clock for the measurement of the nautical longitude, and was the first to construct a spring pendulum. In cooperation with the astronomer Johannes Hevelius, Kochański executed a stucco sundial which decorates the main body of the Wilanów Palace. He dedicated his complete works (31 in total) to Jan III Sobieski.
As a librarian, he travelled to Gdańsk to obtain for the royal collection the legacy of Hevelius (who died in 1686). He looked after the king’s collection of books amassed in Wilanów and Warsaw. The latter collection was listed by Kochański, presumably in preparation for the ensuing transport to Zhovkva [Żółkiew] or its transfer to another owner. In 1695 Kochański left the court and went to take a cure in the Cieplice spa, from which he never returned. The Jesuit remained in contact with numerous European scholars, including the physicist Philip Sachs and the philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz.
Kochański’s extant manuscripts are dispersed. His planned works remained unrealized and the accomplished ones are preserved incomplete. More and more falling into a decline towards the end of his life, the scholar died in Cieplice in May 1700.
