A brief history of the Faculty

The history of the Faculty of Biology goes back to 1919, the very year when Poznań University was established. Among its twenty-one Chair-Departments, there were the Chair-Department of Botany and of Zoology, organized within the Section of Mathematics and Natural Science. In September 1925, Poznań University's Faculty of Philosophy was replaced with two new Faculties of the Humanities and of Mathematics and Natural Science; within the latter, the following Chair-Departments were created: of Plant Systematics and Geobotany, of Zoology, of Comparative Anatomy, of Paleontology and of Plant Anatomy and Physiology. Their research concerns covered such branches of biology as phytosociology, floristics, plant systematics and geobotany, plant and animal anatomy, hydrobiology, animal systematics and morphology, or the study of the animal life of specific regions and geologic epochs or periods. It is worth emphasizing that the Faculty indefatigably promoted the cause of the conservation of nature.
When Poznań University was reinstituted after World War II (in 1955 it was renamed Adam Mickiewicz University), it still comprised the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science, which in 1951, however, was divided into two Faculties: of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, and of Biology and Earth Sciences. The following biological Departments operated within the latter Faculty; the Department of Zoology, of Anthropology, of General Botany, of Plant Systematics and Geobotany, of the Conservation of Nature, and the Botanical Garden. In 1953, the faculty was reorganized, and Chair-Departments were reintroduced. Their research topics included: the sporiferous and vascular plants of Poland; the organization of forest areas; experimental taxonomy; the metabolism of plants; the systematics, morphology and zoogeography of molluscs, arachnids and crustaceans; the study of sponges; and animal histology and physiology. The advancement of biology in the 1950s and '60s resulted in the creation of new Department's within Chair-Departments; these were: the Department of Animal Physiology (since 1958 within the Chair-Department of General Zoology), of Animal Morphology (since 1961 within the Chair-Department of Systematic Zoology), of Biochemistry (since 1960 within the Chair-Department of Plant Physiology; this Department became an independent Chair-Department of Biochemistry in 1964); and the Departments of Experimental Systematics , of Geobotany, and of Plant Ecology (all within the Chair-Department of Plant Systematics and Geobotany).
In 1969, the Faculty of Biology and Earth Sciences was reorganized again, and two Institutes, of Biology and of Geography, superseded the Chair-Departments. The Institute of Biology comprised the previously operating Departments and moreover the following new Departments were immediately established: of Cytology and Histology, of Plant Taxonomy, of Genetics, of microbiology, of Hydrobiology, of Bioenergetics, of Biochemistry of Biopolymers, of Carbon and Nitrogen Metabolism, and the Research Department of Ergonomics. The Botanical Garden was still active in the structure of the Institute of Biology at this time. Among the research issues addressed at that time, we may mention: the morphogenesis and experimental embryology of plants; the genetics of plant populations; the molecular structure of plasmatic membranes and the movement of ions through these; ribosomal ribonucleic acids in plants and the metabolism of organic acids in plants; isoenzymes and their function in the cell; the respiratory processes of the germinating seeds of Papillionoideae; the impact of hormones on the biological development and metabolism of animals; cytochemical and histochemical studies of animals; the plants of Poland; zoogeography; parasitology, the fauna of soil (acarids, pseudoscorpions, spiders and apterygotes); the systematics, morphology and anatomy of certain invertebrates (molluscs, insects, arachnids and chilopods) and vertebrates (birds and mammals); the taxonomy and chorology of plants, specifically of the flora of Africa; the study of the flora and vegetation of the forests, basins and peat bogs of north-western  Poland;; the plants of high mountains; the taxonomy of charas, fungi, lichens, mosses and liverworts; the biological condition of prehistoric and contemporary human populations; the anthropometrics of Slavonic nations in the Middle Ages; the ontogenesis of the students of secondary schools of general education; and attempts at explaining the ethnogenesis of certain Central African peoples.
In 1984, following another reorganization, the Faculty of Biology and Earth Sciences was divided into two new Faculties: of Geographic and Geological Sciences, and of Biology. The latter was initially made up of nineteen Departments. In due course, a two-level structure was implemented, and Departments were organized into four Institutes corresponding to the Faculty's four teaching specializations. The first to emerge was the Institute of Anthropology, established in 1987. This was followed in 1992 by the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, and, in 1994, by the Institutes of Experimental Biology and of Environmental Biology.
In 2004, Departments start moving into a new building of Collegium Biologicum, at Umultowska 89 in a new Campus in Morasko.