[bobthechef]

I've noticed more than a few Poles saddled with non-Polish roots in various history books. Banach himself was at one point incorrectly identified as a Russian mathematician in an old edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Sometimes the cause of error may be the historian's ignorance, sometimes nationalistic appropriation by others. Many Poles also often worked abroad during the 19th and 20th centuries because of foreign oppression by the Germans, Russians, and the Austrians (the last to a lesser degree than the first two).