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SIESC 2007 in
CROATIA
European Federation of Christian Teachers
Fédération Européenne d'Enseignants Chrétiens
Europäische Föderation Christlicher Lehrer/innen
You cannot report on half a century in a few pages...
Yves CALAIS, see History
of SIESC
An attempt to briefly describe some achievements of
Darko Zubrinic, Zagreb
The first known manual about book-keeping was Della
mercatura
e del mercante perfetto, (On merchantry and the perfect merchant) written
in
1458 by Benko Kotruljic or Benedikt Kotruljevic (Benedictus
de Cotrullis, born in Dubrovnik, 1416-1469). It is also
the oldest known manuscript on double-entry. As such it precedes Luca
Pacioli's description of double-entry for no less than 36 years, so that Kotruljic's
priority is indisputable.
Kotruljic's famous 1464 manuscript on
book-keeping,
was printed in 1573 in Venice; editor and publisher was
another oustanding Croatian scholar - Franjo Petris
The French translation of Kotruljic's book appeared under the title "Parfait
négociant" in Lyon in 1613.
In the book he states the following: "I declare
that a merchant must not only be a good writer,accountant and book-keeper,
but he also has to be a man of letters and rhetorician."
His another important manuscript is Benedictus de Cotrullis: "De
Navigatione", 1464, written also in Italian. It is the first
known manual on navigation in the history of Europe. Note that it
appeared almost 30 years before the discovery of America. The book has
been frequently copied throughout Mediteranean.
Benedictus de Cotrullis: De Navigatione,
1464;
photo from Beinecke
Rare Book & Manuscript Library
The original manuscript is kept at the University of Yale (in the Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 557), and has 132 pp.
The first technical discoveries
are related to the name of Faust Vrancic (lat. Faustus
Verantius, italianized name Fausto Veranzio, hungarized name Faustus
Verancsics, 1551-1617). It is known that he collaborated with Tycho
Brache and Johannes Keppler. Vrancic was fluent in at least seven languages.
At the court of King Rudolph II in Hradcani in Prague (Rudloph II was
Roman-German Emperor and Croatian-Hungarian King) he worked as his secretary,
and in that period completed his important dictionary
of five most noble European languages (Dictionarium quinque nobilissimarum
Europeae linguarum: Latinae, Italicae, Germanicae, Dalmaticae et
Hungaricae) and published in Venice in 1595. He is best known for
his book of inventions in Machinae Novae, published also in Venice
in 1595. The book was financially supported by the French King Louis
XIII, and the Toscan Duke Cosimo II de Medici. Among his numerous inventions
the most famous is the parachute, which he tested in Venice. It
is true that Leonardo da Vinci had a similar idea earlier, but he made
only a rough sketch of it, of pyramidal shape, while Vranic's parachute
had rectangular shape, as today.
Vrancic also constructed a mill driven by tides, ropeway, gave a new construction
of metal bridges (suspended by iron chains, i.e. suspension bridges),
described in his famous book on mechanics Machinae novae (61 constructions,
Venice, 1595). It was not until the late 18th century, that is, two centuries
later, that such bridges were built. The book was soon translated from
Latin into Italian, Spanish, French and German. A sketch of his well known Homo
volans (parachutist) appearing in Machinae novae is often attributed
to Leonardo in the literature, which is wrong. Vrancic was the Chancellor
of king Rudolph II for Hungary and Transylvania.

See Faust Vrancic (by dr. Vladimir Muljevic, in Croatian)
For example, the famous Verrazzano Narrows
Bridge is the largest suspension bridge in the USA (New York, 1298 m), see
also Historical
Develpment of Iron and Steel in Bridges.

Faust Vrancic performed a jump with his parachute somewhere in Venice
in order to test it. This fact is explicitly stated in a book written
by English
bishop John Willkins (1614-1672), secretary of the Royal Society in London,
only 30 years after the jump. The title of his book which contains this important
testimony about Faust
Vrancic is Mathematical Magic of the Wonders that may be Performed by Mechanical
Geometry, part I: Concerning Mechanical Powers Motion, part II, Deadloss or Mechanical
Motions, published in London in 1648.
See Vladimir Muljevic: Hrvatski znanstvenici Antun i Faust
Vrancic, Encyclopedia Moderna, god. 14, II, Zagreb, 1993. I express my sincere
gratitude to Professor Emeritus V. Muljevic
for this information.
Vrancic also described in his book Machinae Novae the first wind
turbine:

Vrancic's Machinae Novae, 1595, was reprinted
- in 1965 by "Heinz Moos Verlag", Munich, Germany (F. Klein,
A. Wisner), translated into five languages,
- in 1968 by "Ferro", Milano, Italy (Umberto Forti), in Italian
- in 1985 by "Magveto", Budapest, Hungary, in Hungarian,
- in 1993 by "Novi Liber", Zagreb, Croatia
Marin
Getaldic - Ghetaldus (1568-1622) born in Dubrovnik,
was the most outstanding Croatian scientist of his time. He studied in Italy,
England and Belgium. His best results are mainly in physics, especially optics,
and mathematics.
Among his numerous books let us mention Promotus
Archimedus (Rome, 1603)
and De resolutione et compositione mathematica (Rome, 1630, in five voluminous
books),
in which Getaldic appears as a pioneer of
algebraization of geometry.
De resolutione et compositione mathematica
libri qvinqvi(Rome, 1630, 343 pp., 22.5 x 31.8
cm), published eight years after his death; a detail from Lemma XXI; Getaldic
is considered to be the main predecessor of Analytic Geometry.
His contributions to geometry had been cited by Christian Huygens and Edmond
Halley.
Marin Getaldic, a portrait kept in Rector's
Palace in Dubrovnik
Getaldic is the constructor of the parabolic mirror (diameter 2/3 m), kept
today in the National Maritime Museum in London. During his sojourn in Padova
he met Galileo Galilei, with whom he corresponded regularly. He was
a good friend to the French mathematician F. Viéte. The fact
that the post of professor of mathematics had been offered to him in Louvain
in Belgium, at that time one of the most famous university centers in Europe,
proves his high scientific reputation.
Quite a number of Croats took part in the first Christian
Missions, especially in South and North America and Asia. Ferdinand Konscak,
or Fernardo Consag (born in Varazdin, 1703-1757), was a Jesuit and a
Croatian missionary in North America. In 1752 he discovered that Baja California was
not an island, as it had been believed until then, but a peninsula. There is
a collection of rocky islets on the north of the Californian bay named in his
honour as the Consag Rocks (Consag Rocas, or Roca de Consag,
near San Felipe).
Denis Diderot and D'Alambert used some of his maps for the French Encyclopedia,
see "Encyclopedie", Supplement 5 Carte (Paris 1755-1780), where his
name is cited as P. Consaque. Alexander Humbolt used his maps for his "Carte
generale... de la Nouvelle Espagne", Paris, 1804, and also Arrowsmith in
his "Map of America", London 1805.
Konscak spoke various dialects
of local Indians, in particular a very difficult dialect of Cochinin Indians.
He
described a sort of boomerang that Indians used for hunting rabbits. His
diaries were printed already during his lifetime (published by Villa-Senor
y Sanchez,
Ortega-Balthasar and Venegas-Buriel), and after his death translated into
many languages. The 1761 copy of Konscak's manuscript about California is held
in
The British Museum. His work Carta del P. Fernando Consag de la Compania de
Jesus, Visistaro de las Misiones de Californias (43 pages) is kept in
the British Museum in London, Library of Congress Harper in Washington, John
Carter
Library in Providence, Library of Pomona College in Pomona, Henry E. Huntington
Library in San Marino.
His life is described by outstanding american historian
Peter Masten Dunne in his monograph Black Robes in Lower California,
Los Angeles, 1952. Seven copies of his maps are published by Ernest J.
Burrus in
his work La obra cartografica, Madrid, 1967. In his 2000 monograph Zoric
proved that Konscak was the author of important work Addiciones a las noticias
contemidas en la Description compnediosa de lo descuviert y conocido de la California.
Since Konscak discovered many springs of pouring water, it is not surprising
that even today there exist shops and warehouses in California bearing
his name: "Licores
Konsag", "Konsag Liquor Store and Mini Market", "Konsaqua" (agua
purificada) etc.
The greatest and most famous Croatian
philosopher and scientist Rudjer Boskovic (Boscovich, 1711-1787), was
born in Dubrovnik, where he was educated in the Jesuit Collegium. He was a
member of the Royal Society of London, a member of St.Petersbug Academy, "membre
correspondant" of the French Academie Royale des Sciences, a member of the Accademia
dell'Arcadia, a professor at many European universities. Very delicate
work on repairing the cupola of St. Peter's church in the Vatican (diameter:
42m) was entrusted to R. Boskovic, a proof that he was a leading European authority
for static computations and civil engineering of that time. Upon the request
of Austrian Empress Maria Theresia, Boskovic was solving the problem of stability
of Royal Library (now National Library) in Vienna.

Portrait of Boskovic by the English painter
Edge Pine (London, 1760).
He was also the founder of the astronomical observatory in Brera near Milan.
In 1773 a charter granted by Louis XV made him a French subject. Soon he was
appointed by Louis XV to a very prestigious position and became the Director
of Naval Optics of the French Navy in Paris (Optique Militaire de la Marine
Royale de France). He left to his adoptive country an achromatic telescope
and micrometer. Boskovic spent nine years in France, and became a good friend
to many outstanding scientist, like the mathematician Clairaut, Lalande, Buffon.
When D'Alembert took him for Italian, he hastened to correct him.
Boskovic stayed 7 months in England and met many famous scientists there:
James Bradley (famous astronomer), George Parker (president of the Royal Academy),
Samuel Johnson (Lexicographer), Edmund Burke (philosopher and political writer),
Joshua Reynolds (the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts), and others.
It is interesting that in England he designed a telescope filled with water
in all its components, which was implemented at the Greenwich observatory in
1871, that is, 84 years after his death. He also met Benjmanin Franklin, who
showed him some of his electrical experiments, see an article by Branko Franolic.

A detail from the Jesuit Collegium where R. Boskovic was educated,
17th century, representing coat of arms of
the Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia,
Boskovic was also a brilliant Croatian Latinist poet.
He wrote an extensive scientific epic De solis et lunae defectibus (On
Solar and Lunar Eclipse) published in London in 1760. It contains 5570 Latin
verses, and was dedicated to the Royal Society of England whose member he was.
In the title one can read "Father r. Boskovic, of the Jesuit Order", although
at that time it was forbidden for Jesuits to live and work in England. The
epic was written in the manner of Roman classics, in dactilus hexameter.
For more information see Latin as literary
language among the Croats
When Charles Burney, a well known English musicologist, met Boskovic in Milan,
he wrote: ...if all Jesuits were like this father, who uses the higher science
and the work of mind to advance science for the happiness of mankind, then
it were to be wished that this society were as durable as is this world.
Boskovic was buried in the church of S. Maria Podone in Milano.

French astronomer Joseph-Jerome de Lalande wrote the following lines in his book Voyage
en Italie:
Le plus grand mathématicen que l'aie connu à Rome
est M. Boscovich, alors jésuite: il est né à Raguse
en 1711, mais il vint à Rome étant encore fort jeune,
et après avoir longtemps professé les mathématiques
au collège romain il fut fait professeur à Milan et
ensuite à Pavie; mais l'on voyait avec peine des talents supérieurs
comme les siens, concentrés dans cette derniére ville;
non seulement il n'y a personne en Italie dont les ouvrages soient
aussi célàbres dans toute l'Europe que les siens, mais
je ne connais pas de géomètre plus spirituel et plus
profond que lui. Sa mesure de la terre, son beau traité sur
la loi de la pesanteur, ses découvertes sur la lumière
et sur diverses parties de la physisque, de l'astronomie, de la géométrie,
son poème sur les éclipses, imprimé à Londres, à Venise
et à Paris, peuvent doner une idée du nombre et de
l'étendue de ses talents; mais il faut l'avoir connu particulérement,
pour savoir combien il a de génie, combien son caractère
est aimable, sa conversation intéressante, et ses idées
sublimes dans tout les genres. En 1773, il a été appelé en
France et naturalisé Français. Il est actuellement
[1784] à Bassano, occupé à faire imprimer ses
nouveaux ouvrages, en cinq volumes.
William Thompson-Kelvin, the English physicist (19/20
centuries), once expressed his opinion that his atomic theory is
a pure "Boskovicianism." Still earlier, Sir Humphry Davy, professor
of physics and chemistry at the Royal Institution in London from
1802 till 1827, mentioned the name of Boskovic on several occasions
in his Diary (Commonplace Book), accepting his atomistic theory.
The diary is kept in the archives of the Royal Institution in London.
Also a famous Irish mathematician and physicist R.W.
Hamilton wrote extensively about Boskovic's theory of forces.
With his theory of forces R. Boskovic was a forerunner of modern
physics for almost two centuries. It was described in his most important
book Theoria Philosophiae naturalis (Vienna 1758, Venice 1763,
London 1922, American edition in 1966).
Werner Heisenberg (Nobel prize for physics in 1932) wrote the following:
Among scientists from the 18th century Boskovic occupies
outstanding place as a theologian, philosopher, mathematician, and
astronomer. His "Theoria philosophiae naturalis" announced hypotheses
which were confirmed only in the course of last fifty years.
Indeed, see his graph of regions of attractive and repelling forces between
material points (elementary particles), the closest region being repelling,
tending to infinity (nuclear force!; see here; published in his Dissertationes de lumine
pars secunda, 1748), and the farthest region is repelling, corresponding
to gravitational force:
This graph was since 1763 called the Boskovic curve (curva
Boscovichiana).
Robert Marsh, the author of Physics and Poets, credits Boskovic with
the idea of FIELD. Faraday and others took the idea from him, see
here. He was the first to apply probability to the theory of errors.
Laplace and Gauss acknowledged their indebtedness to his work which
led to the Legendre principle of least squares in statistics (stating
that the best fitting line is the one with the smallest sum of squared
residuals).

He was also very active in astronomy and diplomacy. A great many letters
sent to his sister and two brothers written in Croatian witness that
he did not neglect his mother tongue. So in one of his letters he wrote
that in one of European cities he saw soldiers - "our Croats" (nase Hrvate).

He also wrote poetry. Most of his manuscripts are kept in the special Boskovic
Archives in the Rare Books library in Berkeley, University of California,
USA:
- altogether 180 items and including 66 scientific treatises, plus
- rich correspondence comprising over 2,000 letters, among others
with Euler, D'Alambert, Lagrange, Laplace, Jacobi and Bernoulli;
he had intense correspondence with his friend Voltaire.

A portrait of Boskovic, published in
Milano in 1818 in a collection of famous
people living between 18th century the beginning of the 19th.
(many thanks to Dr Luca Leoni, Italy, for the photo)
Some of his books, articles and letters, together with other documents,
are kept in the famous Franciscan monastery (Samostan Male Brace)
in Dubrovnik. Its library possesses 30,000 volumes, 22 incunabula,
1,500 valuable handwritten documents. It was severely damaged in the
aggression in 1991/92 (shelled by the Serbian Army
- 37 direct hits).
 One of the greatest English 20th
century novelists Aldous Huxley, in Antic Hay (1923) mentions Boskovic,
Leonardo, Michelangelo, Händel.
Filip Vezdin or Wesdin (Paulinus a Sancto
Bartolomaeo, 1748-1806), pioneer of European indology, was born
in a Croatian village of Cimov (Hof am Leithagebirge) in Lower Austria
in Burgenland (Gradisce). He completed his studies of philosophy and
theology, Roman languages and English in Linz and Prague. Besides native
Croatian he spoke Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, Hungarian, Italian,
Portuguese and English. As a Carmelitan missionary (with monastic name
Paulin of St. Bartholomew) Vezdin was sent to India in 1776, where
he learned Sanskrit and several Indian dialects.
For more information see Filip Vezdin (in Croatian)
Vezdin is the author of Sidharubam seu gramatica samscrdamica,
the first printed Sanskrit grammar in Europe, published in 1790 in
Rome. Extended edition was published in 1804 and entitled Vyacarana
seu locupletissima samsrdamicae linguae instituio.

The first printed Sanskrit grammar
in Europe, written by Filip Vezdin in 1790,
photo from volksgruppen.orf.at/hrvati/visti/stories/45925/
He wrote numerous works on Indian culture, and in addition to Sanskrit
also learned Malayalam, the Malabar coastal language, in which he
wrote his works as well. At the request of a local ruler, King Rama
Varmer of the Travancore, he wrote an English-Portugese-Malayalam
grammar. The King, enthusiasted with Vezdin's fluency in Malayalam,
asked him to be his teacher of English and Portuguese in his palace
in Padmanabpuram. Vezdin's works are kept in Rome, Vienna and Uppsala.
The first methodical study of connections between Indo-European languages
is contained in his work De antiquitae et affimitate lingaue zendicae,
samscrdamicae et germanicae disseratio, Rome 1798.
Filip Vezdin, pioneer of European
indology,
photo from volksgruppen.orf.at/hrvati/visti/stories/45925/
Vezdin's best known work is Systema brahmanicum liturgicum, mythologicum,
civile ex monumentis Indicis Musei Borgian Velitris, Rome 1791,
dealing with literature, mythology and civil order of brahmanic
India, customs and the way of life. His most interesting and most
popular work is his travel-book Viaggio alle Indie orientali,
Rome 1796. He also published two philological studies about connections
between Hungarian and Laponian languages. Vezdin is considered as
one of pioneers of European indology.
About twenty of his books were published already during his lifetime.
Some of them were translated into German, French, English and Swedish.
It is therefore no surprise that he was a member of the Royal Academy
in Naples, and of the Academy "Dei Volsci" in Velletri and
Padova.

A postage stamp issued by a Cultural Association,
Hof
am Leithaberge, Austria in 2006, commemorating
200 years since Vezdin's death.
Many thanks to Dr Luca Leoni, Velletri.
In 2006 a memorial tablet dedicated to Filip Fezdin was placed in
Velletri, a town near Rome, on the building of Museo Borgia (in Via
della Trinita), where Vezdin had been working. The tablet mentions
his Croatian descent: "Croato del Burgenland". Also, on
that occasion an Italian translation of the monograph written by Dr.
Branko Franolic about Filip Vezdin was promoted in the City Council
of Velletri ("Paolino di San Bartolomeo, pioniere dell'indologia
nell'Europa di fine Settecento", translated from the English
original by Dr. Luca Leoni).

Memorial tablet dedicated to Filip
Vezdin in Velletri, Italy, 2006
Many thanks to Dr Luca Leoni, Velletri, for the photo and his translation:
TO
VELLETRI'S VOLSCIAN ACADEMIC
PAOLINO DI SAN BARTOLOMEO
BAREFOOTED CARMELITE
IN THE WORLD IVAN FILIP VEZDIN
BURGENLAND CROAT
MISSIONARY IN INDIA
PIONEER OF INDOLOGY
FATHER OF INDOEUROPEAN PHILOLOGY
FAITHFUL AND DEVOTED COLLABORATOR
OF THE LEARNED PATRON
CARDINAL STEFANO BORGIA
HE MASTERED HIS STUDIES
IN THE FAMOUS BORGIA MUSEUM
FORMERLY PLACED HERE
THE CITY OF VELLETRI
PLACED THIS
1806-2006
|

Filip Vezdin, portrait from 1793 probably
by J.H. Cabott (1754-1841),
once in cardinal Stefano Borgia's library in "Palazzo Altemps", Rome,
now conserved in "Propaganda Fide", Rome
(many thanks to Dr Luca Leoni, Velletri)
Vezdin's research gave a great impetus to investigation of culture
and civilization of India in Europe. In 1999 Vezdin's image was carved
into the white marble memorial plaque in the City Museum of Trivandrum,
the capital of the Indian state of Kerala. Furthermore, the following
text was written in the Sanskrit, Malayalam, Croatian and English
languages on memorial tablet in the museum:
Ivan Filip Vezdin, Burgenland Croat, Discalceate
Carmelite, with the monastic name Paulin of St. Bartholomew,
a missionary in Malabar from 1776 to 1789. The author of the
first printed Sanskrit grammar and forerunner of Indian and
Indo-European studies to the great honour of his homeland
and the Croatian and Indian people. |
Ivan Filip Vezdin, gradiscanski Hrvat, bosonogi
karmelicanin, 1776. - 1789., misionarski je djelovao na Malabaru.
Pisac prve tiskane sanskrtske gramatike i preteca indijskih
i indoeuropskih studija na veliku cast svojoj domovini te
hrvatskom i indijskom narodu. |
Among scientists studying seismology the famous Moho-layer
(or Moho-discontinuity) of the Earth is well known. It was named
after the great Croatian geophysicist Andrija
Mohorovicic (born in Volosko, 1857-1936), professor at the University
of Zagreb. His discovery was essential for understanding the
inner structure of the Earth and the behavior of seismic waves.
Together with the theory of forces due to Rudjer
Boskovic, this is probably the greatest achievement in the history
of Croatian science.
Let us cite a part of his biography from Willard Basom's monograph A
hole in the Bottom of the Sea, The story of the MOHOLE
project, 1959/61, Doubledays, USA (p. 143):
...As a boy of 15 he spoke Italian, French, and English as well
as his native Croatian, later added German, Czech, Latin, and old Greek.
He studied physics at the University of Prague under some famous professors
including E. Mach and did his graduate work at the University of Zagreb,
from which he obtained a Ph.D. In 1894 Dr. Mohorovicic became Director of
the Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics and Professor at the University
of Zagreb in 1897, where he remained until his retirement in 1921. His special
interest was the precise measurement of time for both astronomical and seismical
events, but his reputation mainly rests on his classic paper in the field
of seismology, The Earthquake of October 8, 1909, which contains
the news of his discovery of a major discontinuity at a depth of 55 kilometers.
This discontinuity, now generally known as the Moho in his honor, defines
the crust of the earth. Professor Mohorovicic died in 1936 in circumstances
approaching poverty.
Photo from an article by Mete Oner: Deepest
borehole ever drilled
Two Croatian names appear on the map of the Moon. The name of Rudjer
Boskovic was given to a mountain on the visible side, and the name of
Andrija Mohorovicic to a mountain on the dark side of the Moon.
William Feller (Zagreb, 1906 -
New York, 1970) is outstanding Croatian - American mathematician. He graduated
in mathematics from the University
of Zagreb (1925), and earned his PhD in Göttingen (1926).

Vilibald Srecko Feller in 1907 (?), Zagreb;
with kind permission of prof. Marta Zdenkovic, Zagreb
Feller was university professor in Kiel,
Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Lund. Since 1939 he lived in the USA, employed
at Universities of Brown, Cornell, and Princeton. He is considered as one
of the founders of the Theory of Probability as a scientific discipline, alongside
with Moivre, Laplace, Poisson, Chebishev, Wiener, Kolmogorov and others.
Vilibald Srecko Feller (bottom right), the
youngest among eight brothers

The First Gymnasium in Zagreb (now the Mimara
Gallery),
where Vilibald Srecko Feller finished his secondary shooling
(1922/23);
Feller is one of the founders of Probability
Theory as a scientific discipline. He is best known for his two volume
monograph An
Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications, Princeton
1950, which is considered as one of the best mathematical textbooks
of the 20th century.

A recent Chinese edition of Feller's monograph
(first Chinese edition appeared in 1964)

William Feller (1906-1970),
photo by Paul Halmos (1916-2006) from his book
I have a photographic memory (Providence, 1987)
Many mathematical
notions bear his name:

Vilim Feller, photo from [Vranic]
William Feller was a member of several national academies, including National
Academy of Sciences, USA, and Croatian Academy of Sciences.
He is recipient of the National Medal of Science from the President of the
USA.
Fran
Bosnjakovic (1902-1993), born in Zagreb, was one of world's leading
experts in technical thermodynamics. Educated in Zagreb, where his scientific
career started in 1926, he moved to Dresden, Germany, in 1928. In 1931 he
became university teacher at Dresden High Mechanical Engineering School.
After a short stay in Belgrade, he moved back to the University of Zagreb
in 1936. After 1945, during the Yugoslav communist regime, he was degraded
to two years of forced labor. In 1951 he became rector of the University
of Zagreb.
Since
1953 he started lecturing at the High technical school in Braunschweig in
Germany, where he became head of the Department for thermodynamics and director
of the Thermotechnical institute. In 1961 he founded the Institute of Thermodynamics
for Aeronautics and Astronautics at the University of Stuttgart, Germany,
that he led until his retirement in 1968. He also established groups for Irreversible
Thermodynamics, Mass Transfer and Thermokinetics, Radiation and Plasma, and
Heat Transfer. It is interesting that his textbook Technische Thermodynamik,
published already in 1935 in Dresden, had seven improved and extended editions
in Germany, and was translated into English (Technical Thermodynamics) and
Russian (Tehnicheskaya termodinamika). The Croatian translation had five editions
(Nauka o toplini). See his list
of publications held at the University of Stuttgart.
Professor Bosnjakovic obtained honorary doctorate from High Technical
School RWTH Aachen, Grashof's medal from the German Society
of Engineers VDI in 1969, gold medal from the Associazione Termotechnica
Italiana in Padova in 1966, another gold medal from the Institut
français des combustibles et de l'énergie in Paris. On
the occasion of his 80'th birthday in 1982 the German Society of Engineers
VDI issued a special publication devoted to his scientific work. In
1987, on the occasion of his 85'th birthday, a solemn colloquium was organized
by the Technical University of Stuttgart. Also, he was a member of
- Academies in Heidelberg (Heidelberger Akademie der Wissesnschaften),
- Braunschweig (Braunschweigsche Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft),
- Assoziazione Termotecnica Italiana in Padova, 1966 (recipient of
gold medal),
- Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Venice,
- honorable member of Institut International du Froid (International
Institute of Refrigeration) since 1960,
- Institut francais des combustibles et de l'energie, 1970 (recipient
of the medal),
- Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (1992, i.e., only after the
fall of ex Yugoslavia, and a year before the death of Bosnjakovic).
On the occasion of his election as a member of the Academy of Sciences in Heidelberg
in 1971, he said:
Denn das Ingenierwessen is vor allem auch ein Beruf des Könnes
und der verantwortungsvollen Gestaltung, wofür wissenschaftliche Grundlagen
nur einen, wenn auch beachtlichen, notwendigen Teil bilden.
Lavoslav Ruzicka (1887-1976, born in Vukovar,
of a Czech father and a Croat mother, attended the gymnasium of Osijek),
obtained the Nobel Prize for discoveries in organic chemistry, professor at
the Technische Hochschule in Zurich, Switzerland 1939; see Ruzicka links.
Vladimir Prelog, (1906-1998, a Croat born in
Sarajevo, studied in Zagreb), obtained the Nobel Prize for discoveries in
organic chemistry, worked at the Technische Hochschule in Zurich, 1975. As
a young boy he was a stipendist of Napredak,
Croatian cultural society in Bosnia and Herzegovina. See Prelog
links. He wrote his authobiography, Vladimir Prelog: My 132 Semesters
of Studies of Chemistry, American Chemical Society, Washington DC 1991
(second edition by Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998). Prelog was among
112 Nobel Prize winner who signed and appeal For Peace
in Croatia in 1992.

Croatian Medicine
Professor Andrija Stampar (1888-1958) was our leading authority in
the field of epidemiology and a pioneer in preventive medicine. As an expert
of the League of Nations he spent three years (1933-1936) in China, developing
the health service there. During the WW2 he was arrested by the German Nazis
and kept in custody in Graz in Austria. He was one of the founders of the
World Health Organization (WHO) and very active in promoting the health service
in Afghanistan, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia. He wrote the introductory declaration
of the Statute of the WHO and was the first president of this organization.
In 1948 Andrija Stampar was the chairman of the first WHO General Assembly in
Geneva.
In 1955 he was awarded the medal of Leon Bernard, which is the most prestigious
international acknowledgement in the field of social medicine. For more details
see his book The first ten years of the World Health Organization, Geneva,
1958.
The most outstanding representative of the Croatian medicine,
our specialist of international reputation in the field of othorhinolaryngology,
was Ante Sercer (1896-1968). Due to his efforts a faculty of medical
science was founded in Sarajevo in 1944. He was the editor in chief
of our Medical Encyclopedia (the first edition appeared in ten volumes, over
700 pages each,
in 1957-1965),
which was one of the first in the world.
It is interesting to mention that the famous
jazz trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong-Satchmo was professor Sercer's
patient in Zagreb, and was treated carcinoma of his lower lip in the sixties.
He also cured Mario del Monaco and Giuseppe di
Stefano.
Mirko
Drazen Grmek (1924-2000), born in Krapina near Zagreb, was professor
of history of medicine at the University of Zagreb, where he founded Institute
for History of Science, and directed the first Croatian Medical Encyclopedia.
Since 1971 he has been full professor at the Sorbonne in Paris, then associate
professor of many European and American universities (Berkeley, Cambridge-Masachusetts,
Geneva, Lausanne, Bologna, Rome, Zagreb), and finally Director of Studies
at the École Practique des Hautes Études, Sorbonne, Paris.
He was director of International school for history of
science in
Naples, Ischy, Annecy, president of European center for history
of medicine in Strasbourg, editor or editor-in-chief of several professional
international science lexicons, author of about thirty books. He introduced the
concept of pathocenosis ("the ensemble of pathological
states present in a specific population at a given moment
in
time") in 1969.
For his scholarly achievements he was awarded with the order of the Knight
of the French Legion of Honour in 1966. On that occasion professor Grmek
stated that he considered this decision not only as a recognition of his work,
but also as a sign of friendship between France and Croatia (for more information see
here [PDF]). He also obtained Laurea ad Honorem from Università di
Bologna. In the early 1990s he advocated Croatia's right to independence
through several appearances on French television, and was the first president
of Almae Mater Croaticae Alumni in Paris.
In 1996 the international scientific journal Eureka called him physician
of the century. The journal portrayed him with the following words:
Mirko Grmek is as famous among scholars throughout the
world as he was unknown to the wider public. This Croat lived supporting
the ideals to which he dedicated his entire life, namely that medicine
must be practiced with full sense of conscience, and that science is
simply another word if it is not accompanied by humanism.
His particularly important books are
- Les maladies a l'aube de la civilisation occidentale, Payot,
Paris 1983 (Deseases in the Ancient Greek World, John Hopkins
Unversity Press, 1989)
- Histoire du sida, Payot, 1989 (History of AIDS, Princeton
University Press, Princeton 1990; the first such book)
- (editor) Histoire da la pensée médicale en Occident,
I, II, III, Seuil, 1995-1999 (Western medical thought from Antiquity
to the Middle Ages Cambridge, MA, 1998)
- Le Legs de Claude Bernard, Fayard, 1997
- La vita, la malattia e la storia, Di Renzo Ed., Rome 1998
(French translation La Vie, les maladies et l'histoire, 1999).
His books (more than 30) are published in several languages: French, Italian,
German, Polish, English,
Croatian.
The SUVAG center
for voice transmission for reeducation of speech disorders and deafness
has been founded in Zagreb in 1961 by Academician Petar
Guberina (1913-2005).
The name of SUVAG is coined from Systeme Universel Verbotonal
d'Audition Guberina.

Visit the Croatian SUVAG center
where professor Guberina works, and where
his verbo-tonal system has been created, now in use throughout the world,
on all five continents. His books were translated into many languages, including
Arabic
and Japanese.
In France, he was awarded the Legion of Honour:
- Knighthood in 1968,
- the Officer’s Cross in 1989, which he was awarded in main quadrangle of
the Sorbonne in Paris.
Petar Guberina earned his PhD in 1939 at Sorbone in Paris, and the title of
his thesis was Valeur logique et valueur stilistique des propositions complexes
en français et en croate.
Croatian Inventors

Cravate with a pattern of Croatian
coat of arms.
The name of "cravate" has been derived from the Croatian name.
- German - die Krawatte
- Italian - Cravatta
- Spanish - Corbata
- Portuguese - Gravata
- Croatian - Kravata
- Irish - Carabhat
- English - Cravat
- Swedish - Kravatt
- Finnish - Kravatti
- Flemish - Krawaat
- Danish - Kravat
- Polish - Krawat
- Ukrainian - Kravatka
- Czech - Kravata
- Slovakian - Kraváta
- Romanian - Cravata
- Turkish - Kravat
Antun Lucic (americanized
name is Anthony F. Lucas; born in Split 1855, died in Washington
1921)
discovered the first major gusher in Texas, The Lucas gusher, flowing
at the rate of 80,000 to 100,000 barrels per day. It blew in January 1901. About
50,000 people came to see it. This meant the earliest massive exploitation of
oil and petroleum in the world.
Antun Lucic, known as Anthony F. Lucas (F. = Francis is after his father
Franjo,
mariner and shipbuilder from the
island of Hvar) believed that the nearby Spindletop hill, near the town of Beaumont, covered a vast
pool of oil. His company became one of the first oil companies in Texas. Antun
Lucic was a mining engineer who completed his studies at the Polytechnic institute
in
Graz, Austria, where also his fellow countryman Nikola
Tesla later studied. By 1902, as many as 285 wells were operating on Spindletop
Hill and over 600 oil companies had been chartered (the population of Spindletop
sprang from 8,000 in 1901 to 60,000 in 1902, i.e. in just a year!). In this way
Captain Anthony Lucas enabled the United States to surpass Russia as the world's
leading oil producer. With the Lucas gusher, a black-gold rush began, and fortune-seekers
from all over the world poured into Texas. Over time, Houston became a center
of the oil
industry, and a captive of the British-dominated global oil cartel.
Anthony Lucas (Antun Lucic) invented the so called "Christmas
tree", which is the system of valves and pipes installed on the
wellhead to harness a gusher. The "Christmas tree" is connected
to the piping for transportation or storage of oil.
Christmas tree invented by Anthony Lucas
in order to harness a gusher (photo from [McBeth])
Anthony Lucas and drilling crew,
photo from Math/Science
Nucleus for children
Spindle Top, congestion of derrics in 1901-1902 (photo
from [McBeth])
Antun Lucic (Anthony Lucas) on the left (photo from [McBeth])
The naval fuel board program adopted by the USA Government in 1901 specified
that all the vessls should be equiped for the burning of oil as fuel.
Railroads in increasing number were using it, and manufacturers were
substituting it for coal and gas. At that time the automobile industry
just began to develop, and the importance of Lucic's discovery for its
further expansion was enormous.
Spindle Top in 1902
Antun Lucic is also considered to be the founder of modern petroleum
reservoir engineering. He was consulting engineer in USA, Russia, Mexico,
Algeria, and Romania. As an expert in mining he was elected the life
long chairman of the American Committee for Oil and Gas (later
called Petroleum Division, more information). In 1936 The American Institute for
Geological and Metallurgical Investigations founded a prize named
after him: Anthony
F. Lucas Gold Medal.
A museum with 18 m high granite obelisk was built in honour to the Lucas
gusher in Spindletop. There is also 1,5 m granite monument of Lucic with
inscription saying that his discovery revolutionarized industry and
transport,... and changed lives of people in the whole world.

18 m high granite obelisk, built in honour
to the Lucas gusher, Spindletop, contains the following lines:
On This Spot
on the Tenth Day of the
Twentieth Century
a New Era
in Civilization Began |
In 1943 Lucas' son and daughter-in-law established charitable foundation
in his name.
Antun Lucic (Anthony F. Lucas) is placed among 200 of most deserving
Americans in the course of the entire history of the USA. There are a
street and an Elementary school bearing his name in the City of Beaumont,
Texas.
As to his nationality, it is often mistakenly described as Austrian,
and sometimes even Italian (like in Who is Who in America, where there
is also another mistake - that he was born in Trieste). On his grave
in Rock Creek, Washington, he is said to be of Illiric origin,
where Illiric is a standard name for Croatian. For more information
about Anthony Lucas see here.
David Schwarz, a Zagreb Jew (1852-1897), invented steerable
metal airship that is today unjustly bearing the name of the German count
Zeppelin. Indeed, Zeppelin bought the complete project from Schwartz's
wife, shortly after his premature death. It is true that in 1897 the
`Zeppelin' constructed by Schwartz fell down during its trial flight
near Berlin, due to a small technical error in the propeller, having
reached the height of 460 m. It was 47.5 m long and had 35 tons.

While preparing the project of his flying ship, which for the first time
was predicted to be metal made, he had to resolve many technical and technological
problems. This led to the discovery of the special aluminum alloy now known
under the name dural, also called the Schwartz aluminum.



Photos from David Schwarz web site by Ante Sucur
The American Israel Numismatic Association issued two nice plaquettes in honour
of David Schwarz, see
here.
The Croatian Jews left truly remarkable traces in arts, music,
science and architecture.
Nikola
Tesla (1856-1943), born in Croatia (at that time within Austria-Hungary),
is well known and need not be particularly introduced.
We feel it is necessary to cite his words that he was equally proud of his Croatian
motherland and Serbian descent. He completed his elementary and secondary school
education in Croatia (in Gospic and Karlovac), and studied in Graz and Prague.
He is the father of alternating electrical current technology and the three phase
system. He is equally known by his contribution to the high frequency technology
and wireless communications. The impact of Tesla's numerous inventions (112 patents
during his work in the USA) on the development of modern civilization is immeasurable.
The unit for magnetic induction Tesla, was named after him (Conference
general des poids et mesures, Paris, 1960). He refused to receive the Nobel prize
which he had to share with T.A. Edison.
Windows of the building of Electricité de Strasbourg in
France, where Tesla had worked for some time, have inscriptions with names
of outstanding scientists. There you can see his name surrounded with Laplace,
Planck, Bohr, Einstein and Rutherford (click on the left). In front of the
building of International Union for Telecommunications in Geneva there is
a statue of Nikola Tesla. When his mother died, he paid a visit to Croatian
capital Zagreb in 1892, where he gave a lecture about alternating current.
On that occasion he said:
As a son of my homeland I feel it is my duty
to help the city of Zagreb in every respect with my advice and work (Smatram
svojom duznoscu da kao rodjeni sin svoje zemlje pomognem gradu Zagrebu
u svakom pogledu savjetom i cinom; photo),
and suggested to
build alternating current power plant. There is no doubt that by saying "homeland" he
meant Croatia. In 1931, at the age of 75, Tesla received birthday greetings
from Lee de Forest and Albert Einstein.
Eduard (Slavoljub) Penkala (1871-1922), born in Slovakia
to a Polish/Dutch family, became naturalized Croat when after his marriage
his
family immigrated to Zagreb.
He invented the mechanical pen in 1906 and fountain pen in 1907
which are bearing his name and now they are in everyday use.
Indeed, the name of "pen" is derived from his family name, and the name of "penkala" is
also in use today for the chemical pen. The patent was registered in thirty-five
countries throughout the world.
He was also one of the first constructors of planes (Zagreb, 1910), only
seven years
after brothers Wright.

His first invention was a rasin bottle filled with hot water, called Termofor (hot
water bottle), used in bed as "central heating" during cold nights.

Mario
Puretic (1917, born in Croatia in Sumartin on the island of Brac),
revolutionarized the technology of pulling out fishing nets from the sea
by his construction of what is now known as the Puretic Power
Block in 1950s. Until then fishing nets had to be manually drawn
by eight to ten people, which was an extremely difficult job. The Marco
Seattle company developed Puretic's idea, and it soon became a standard
mean of fishing in the whole world. In 1975 the United States Patent Office
conferred him a special recognition for his patent which revolutionarized
the fishing technology worldwide. He was elected among hundred greatest
inventors of the 20th century in the USA. In 1972 the National Bank of
Canada issued a new series of 5 dollar banknotes with the Puretic Power
Block on a fishing boat drawn on the reverse side! For more details see
Adam Eterovic: Mario Puretic, the King of Purse
Seine Fishing
From Marco
Seattle web site: No single invention has contributed more to the
success of purse seine net hauling than Marco's extensive line of Power
Blocks. First introduced in the 1950's the Puretic Power Block line
became the linch-pin in the mechanization of purse seining. Combined with
fluid hydraulic power technology and new large synthetic nets, it changed
the whole character of purse seine fishing. From those early days the
Marco Power Block has undergone many design improvements to provide the
widest available range of sizes and power options to match changing requirements.
Anthony
Maglica, holder of hundreds of patents and trademarks,
founded Mag Instrument, Inc, in Los Angeles
in 1955, and
designed Mag-Lite flashlight, which is now an American product icon,
among 100 top products that "America makes best". The Maglite products have
been honored by the Japan Institute of Design and the Museum for Applied Art
in Germany. Mag
Instrument donated thousands of flashlights to aid in the rescue efforts at
the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001. Born in New York, and as a child
raised
in Croatia, Tony Maglica has plenty of other interests which include also Zlarin,
Croatia, where he
grew up.

Agabekov
SA is world's famous company seated in Geneva, Switzerland, dealing
with exterior lighting design. Mr Youri Agabekov, the
founder of the company, has Croatian roots: his father is Ladislav Zerjavic,
from Hrvatsko Zagorje near Zagreb. His products have been used to cover
with soft lighting such buildings like (photos by kind permission of Mr.
Youri Agabekov):
- the Vatican
- Louvre, Paris
- Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow
- Saint Michel Bridge, Paris
- Palace of Sponza in Dubrovnik,
Croatia
- Villa Astra in
Lovran, Croatia
- Guernica by P. Picasso, Paris
- College de France, Paris
- Kingston Bridge, London
- Siltassari and Pitkäslita Bridges in Helsinki (Finland)
- Museum Arqueologic de Catalunya and Cathedral of Barcelona
- Cathedral of Palma de Mallorca, Spain
- Queen's Residence "Parlement" in Holland
- Princely Palace of Monaco
- National Museum Singapore
- Palacio National Mexico
- Banque Européenne in Bruxelles (Belgium)
- National Bank of Greece in Athens
- Bank of Luxemburg, etc.

Mr Youri Agabekov is a Croat born in Russia, living in Switzerland (Geneva)
and in Croatia (Zagreb). His company, Agabekov SA, has 80 representatives
throughout the world. Here is the logo of the company devoted to his wife
Branka:

Light
fixture, United States Patent 4158221 by Youri Agabekov; some of his
patents are also held in Japan

Palace of Sponza, Dubrovnik
Ralph Tony Sarich (born in 1938)
is an Australian Croat who developed the Orbital Engine in 1972.
He is a recipent of several prestigeous ingeneering awards like Australian
Inventor of the Year 1972, Sir Lawrence Hartnett Inventors Award 1972, Churchill
Medal, British Society of Engineers 1987 and Clunies Ross National Science
and Technology Award 1991. His parents are Croatian immigrants to Australia.
See Orbital
Engine Patent.
Miss Australia Michelle Downes visited Ralph
Sarich's workshop
where she was shown his revolutionary orbital engine in 1972.
Source business.thewest.com.au
The service of buying parking tickets via mobile phones is today
widespread worldwide. The service has been conceived and
developed in Croatia.
Marin Soljacic is
the author of the new Wireless
Power Transfer Technology, conceived in 1996. It attracted a substantial
interest of the press (more than 200 articles in leading newspapers
and radio-reports in numerous countries around the world, including:
USA, Germany, Australia, Iran, India, Croatia, Greece, Spain, France, Italy,
UK, Poland, Canada, the Netherlands, Thailand, Dominican Republic).
He
is a young Croatian physicist born in the City of Zagreb, where he finished
his secondary school education.
Dr. Marin Soljacic is
employed as researcher
at the Department of Physics, Massachussetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), USA. His father, Dr. Ivo Soljacic, is a very active member of HKDPD in
Zagreb.
Croatia - France, an overview of cultural and
historical relations - a sketch
SIESC 2007 in Croatia
|