Wróblewski was born in Grodno (Russian Empire, now in Belarus). He studied at Kiev University. After a six-year exile for participating in the January 1863 Uprising against Imperial Russia, he studied in Berlin and Heidelberg. He defended his doctoral dissertation at Munich University in 1876 and became an assistant professor at Strasburg University. In 1880 he became a member of the Polish Academy of Learning.

Olszewski was a graduate of Kazimierz Brodziński High School in Tarnów (Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Kazimierza Brodzińskiego). He studied at Kraków's Jagiellonian University in the departments of mathematics and physics, and chemistry and biology. He carried out his first experiments using a personally improved compressor, compressing and condensing carbon dioxide.