The "Szkocka" Café, located in Lviv at 27 Shevchenko Avenue, became a true intellectual hub of the city in the 1930s.

It was here that members of the celebrated Lviv School of Mathematics gathered — Stanisław Ulam, Hugo Steinhaus, Stanisław Mazur, and other professors from Lviv University and the Polytechnic. Over a cup of coffee, they not only conversed but also generated new ideas, formulated and solved complex mathematical problems. The leader of this circle was the distinguished mathematician Stefan Banach. At first, the scholars wrote their formulas directly on the tables or napkins, which displeased the owner of the establishment. Then, according to one version, Banach's wife (or one of the clever waiters) bought them a large notebook.

This is how the legendary "Scottish Book" came into being — a unique manuscript that later gained worldwide fame as a symbol of mathematicians' creative collaboration. Entries were made in the book from 1935 until 1941 — until the outbreak of the Second World War, when many scholars were forced to emigrate. After the war, the original book passed to Banach's family, and today it is preserved at the Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in the Banach Centre.

In 1981, an edited version of the "Scottish Book" was published, reflecting the current state of solutions to many of the problems. A copy of this unique manuscript is preserved to this day — reminding visitors of a time when Lviv was one of the centers of world science.