Maciej Jakubowski was a pediatrician and a professor at the Jagiellonian University. He was born in 1837 in Krakow and died there in 1915. He studied medicine at the Jagiellonian University, and later in Vienna, Prague and Paris. In 1864 he founded the first Department of Paediatrics at the Jagiellonian University in Poland, and the third one in the world. In 1887 he established a sanatorium for children with tuberculosis in Rabka. He was a pioneer of balneological treatment of children and prophylactic actions in infectious diseases. He was one of the first doctors to treat children against smallpox. He also paid a lot of attention to the mental development of children. He was an excellent doctor, organizer, lecturer, teacher and tutor of numerous groups of doctors.