[The problem of environmental protection in scientific research and medical teaching in Wielkopolska in the years 1945-2000]

The article, using a selected region, Wielkopolska, as an example, answers the question in what way science and teaching have reacted to the influence of the problem of the natural environment and its protection on the lives and health of people and on the quality of life. A survey of environmental research and teaching covered the period 1945-2000. This fifty year period accepted by the authors of the article seems a sufficient basis on which to judge the quality of scientific trends connected with this topic. The Wielkopolska survey is discussed against the background of society's growing expectations, expressed in the postulates of environmental organizations and in the concepts of eco-development, preferred by many European and some Polish communities.