When the Polish uprising against Russia broke out in January 1863, Dybowski was 30 years old and already a well-educated scientist (after studying in Dorpat, Wrocław and Berlin) with a PhD in natural sciences. Nevertheless, he actively joined up to the anti-Russian conspiracy. He was arrested in 1864 and sentenced to death. Thanks to the intercession of German naturalists, his sentence was commuted to 12 years of hard labor in Siberia. After several years of exile, the terms of his sentence were relaxed, allowing him to undertake systematic scientific research. Along with, among other people, Wiktor Godlewski, he carried out measurements at the deepest lake in the world – Baikal, and proved the existence of rich, original biological life in its deepest zone. Dybowski’s findings proved to be a global revelation. In the years 1879–1882 he stayed in Kamchatka, where he fought epidemics and acclimatized farm animals, earning the gratitude of the natives. He returned to the country in 1877. He was associated with the University of Lviv until the end of his life.

“He lived a long life, almost 100 years, and until the end of his days he retained a freshness of mind and the ability to do scientific work, and he was active in this field at an age when others would have long been taking a well-deserved rest” – wrote Bogdan Dyakowski a year after the death of Benedykt Dybowski.