Stanisław Mieczysław Mazur (1 January 1905, Lwów – 5 November 1981, Warsaw) was a Polish mathematician and a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Mazur made important contributions to geometrical methods in linear and nonlinear functional analysis and to the study of Banach algebras. He was also interested in summability theory, infinite games and computable functions. Lwów and Warsaw Mazur was a student of Stefan Banach at University of Lwów. His doctorate, under Banach's supervision, was awarded in 1935. Mazur, with Juliusz Schauder, was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1936 in Oslo. Mazur was a close collaborator with Banach at Lwów and was a member of the Lwów School of Mathematics, where he participated in the mathematical activities at the Scottish Café. On 6 November 1936, he posed the "basis problem" of determining whether every Banach space has a Schauder basis, with Mazur promising a "live goose" as a reward: 37 years later and in a ceremony that was broadcast throughout Poland, Mazur awarded a live goose to Per Enflo for constructing a counter-example. From 1948 Mazur worked at the University of Warsaw. See also Approximation problem Approximation property Banach–Mazur theorem Banach–Mazur game Compact operator Gelfand–Mazur theorem Mazur–Ulam theorem Schauder basis References External links 1905 births 1981 deaths Lwów School of Mathematics People from the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria Ukrainian Jews Polish Workers' Party politicians Members of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party Members of the Polish Sejm 1947–1952 Members of the Polish Sejm 1952–1956 Functional analysts Measure theorists Academic staff of the University of Lviv Members of the Polish Academy of Sciences Recipients of the Order of the Banner of Work Officers of the Order of Polonia Restituta Academic staff of the University of Warsaw Recipients of the State Award Badge (Poland)