Helena Rasiowa (20 June 1917 – 9 August 1994) was a Polish mathematician. She worked in the foundations of mathematics and algebraic logic. Early years Rasiowa was born in Vienna on 20 June 1917 to Polish parents. As soon as Poland regained its independence in 1918, the family settled in Warsaw. Helena's father was a railway specialist. She exhibited many different skills and interests, from music to business management and the most important of her interests, mathematics. In 1938, the time was not very opportune for entering a university. Rasiowa had to interrupt her studies, as no legal education was possible in Poland after 1939. Many people fled the country, or at least they fled the big towns, which were subject to German bombardment and terror. The Rasiowa family fled also, as most high-ranking administration officials and members of the government were being evacuated to Romania. The family spent a year in Lviv. After the Soviet invasion in September 1939, the town was taken over by the Soviet Union. The lives of many Poles became endangered, so Helena's father decided to return to Warsaw. Academic development Rasiowa became strongly influenced by Polish logicians. She wrote her Master's thesis under the supervision of Jan Łukasiewicz and Bolesław Sobociński. In 1944, the Warsaw Uprising broke out and consequently Warsaw was almost completely destroyed. This was not only due to the immediate fighting, but also because of the systematic destruction which followed the uprising after it had been suppressed. Rasiowa's thesis burned with the whole house. She herself survived with her mother in a cellar covered by the ruins of the demolished building. After the war, Polish mathematics began to recover its institutions, its moods, and its people. Those who remained considered their duty to be the reconstruction of Polish universities and the scientific community. One of the important conditions for this reconstruction was to gather all those who could participate in re-creating mathematics. In the meantime, Rasiowa had accepted a teaching position in a secondary school. That is where she met Andrzej Mostowski and came back to the university. She re-wrote her Master's thesis in 1945 and in the next year she started her academic career as an assistant at the University of Warsaw, the institution she remained linked with for the rest of her life. At the university, she prepared and defended her PhD thesis, Algebraic Treatment of the Functional Calculi