Adam Chmielewski was born on 6 January 1959 in Łaszczów, Lubelskie Province. He attended the primary school in Łaszczów and secondary schools in Puławy and Tarnów. He studied philosophy and social sciences at the University of Wrocław (1979-1984), at the University of Oxford (1988/89, grantee of the Stafan Batory Foundation), at the City University of New York (1992, grantee of the Tadeusz Kościuszko Foundation) and in Edinburgh (1999, grantee of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation).
In 1992 he received his Ph.D. degree at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow for the doctoral thesis entitled "Science and method in Karl Popper's philosophy". In 1998, at the University of Wrocław, he became an Associate Professor on the basis of the thesis entitled "Non-proportionality, untranslatability, conflict" (1997). In 1999 he became a professor at the University of Wrocław on the basis of the book entitled "The open society or commonwealth" (2001). In 2002 he was awarded the title of the professor of philosophy.
He is the author of approximately 300 scientific and popular-scientific publications which were published in Poland and abroad. What he focuses on is various disciplines of philosophy, including methodology, the philosophy of science, ethics and political philosophy. A large part of his scientific work was devoted to Sir Karl Popper's philosophy and Alasdair MacIntyre's philosophy of morality and politics; he wrote two books about Sir Karl Popper and translated Sir Karl Popper’s five books and MacIntyre's two books into Polish. His publications include numerous translations of books from the field of philosophy of science, social philosophy and economics, inter alia the texts of Friedrich von Hayek as well as works of the social philosophers Bertrand Russell, Isaiah Berlin, Alasdair MacIntyre, Arnold Toynbee, Daisaku Ikeda and Slavoj Žižek. He co-edited publications of collected works by Klemens Szaniawski entitled “On Science, Inference, Information and Decision Making”, Amsterdam 1998. He also published in The Times Literary Supplement and in journals in England, the US, Chile, Romania and Hungary. As regards his scientific and organisational activity, he was awarded with many Awards of the Rector of the University of Wrocław, the Award of the Association of Polish Translators and Interpreters (1993) and the Award of the Minister of National Education (1996).
At present he is a member of editorial boards of the Wrocław monthly Odra, the Warsaw quarterly Kultura Współczesna, the Cracow philosophical journal Principia and the magazine Nowa Krytyka published in Szczecin; he co-edits Newsletter (Toronto) and the Internet magazine Critical Rationalist. He is also the principal of the International Summer School of the University of Wrocław. Since the year 2000 he has been a Proxy of the Rector of the University of Wrocław responsible for organisational issues. As a member of the university's authorities he gained considerable means for promotion and renovation of the university as well as for financing the celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the University of Wrocław.
He publishes commentaries regarding social and political issues in the following newspapers and magazines: Odra, Polityka, Gazeta Wyborcza, Wiadomości Kulturalne, Przegląd and in the local press published in Wrocław.
He co-organised a number of political conferences and meetings as well as cultural events in Wrocław and abroad.
One of the most important events he co-organised with the representatives of the Polish diplomacy at UNESCO is the international session at the headquarters of UNESCO in Paris devoted to the 300th anniversary of the University of Wrocław, which took place on 10 October 2002.
It was his idea to organise the international meeting of the president of Poland Aleksander Kwaśniewski with the president of the Federal Republic of Germany Dr Johannes Rau, the president of the Senate of Austria Ludwig Bieringer, the vice-chairperson of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Republic of Hungary Ibolya Dávid and minister Petr Buriánek, the representative of the president of the Czech Republic Dr Václav Hável. The meeting took place on 15 November 2002 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the University of Wrocław.
He was the representative of the University of Wrocław engaged in the co-organisation of the meetings of the leaders of the states belonging to the Weimar Triangle that took place at the University of Wrocław on 9 May 2003 as well as of Javier Solana's visit at the University of Wrocław that took place on 2 October 2002.