Krystyna Łybacka

Krystyna Maria Łybacka (Polish pronunciation: [krɨˈstɨna wɨˈbat͡ska]; born 10 February 1946 in Jutrosin) is a Polish political figure who has been serving in the country's national Parliament (Sejm), since 1991 and, from October 2001 to May 2004, was a member of the cabinet, with the title of Minister of National Education.

A native of the small, west-central town of Jutrosin in Greater Poland Voivodeship's Rawicz County, Łybacka received her degree from the mathematics/physics/chemistry department at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Earning a doctorate from the Mathematics Institute of Poznań University of Technology in 1976 with the thesis, Random Division of a Square, she remained on the faculty of the Institute's Electrical Engineering department. For over two decades (1968–91) she served as the technical and academic secretary of the Polish Mathematical Society.

During the years 1978–89, she was a member of Polish United Workers' Party, the name used by the Communist Party ruling Poland between 1948 and 1989 and, in 1993, joined its successor party, the Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland, becoming, in 1996, its leader in Poznań. In 1999, she rose to the head of Poznań voivodeship sejmik [council] and, in December, to deputy leader of the Democratic Left Alliance's national leadership council. Starting with modern Poland's first entirely free election, in 1991, she has been re-elected to the Sejm in each subsequent poll, 1993, 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2007, serving on various committees, including the National Defense Committee and the Special Services Committee. In her 3rd term, she was deputy head of the Committee for Education, Study and Youth, a position she also held in the 5th term.

In the aftermath of the 23 September 2001 parliamentary election, Prime Minister Leszek Miller asked her to join his cabinet in the position of Minister of National Education and Sport, which she fulfilled for the following two-and-a-half years from 19 October 2001 until 2 May 2004. Subsequently, in 2004–05, she was deputy leader of the Democratic Left Alliance's Parliamentary Club. Following her win in the 2007 election, with 24,405 votes in the Poznań constituency, she switched, on 22 April 2008, to the new Left grouping formed from the dissolved Left and Democrats.