ABOUT THE SERBS : Great Serbs
Serbian History | Great Serbs

Music (Stevan Mokranjac, Vasilije Mokranjac, Ljubica Maric, Dragutin Gostuski)
Poetry and Literature (Ivo Andric, Milorad Pavic, Jovan Ducic)
Science and Technology (Mihailo Pupin, Nikola Tesla, Jovan Karamata, Djuro Kurepa, Mihailo Petrovic)
 


MUSIC 
Stevan Stojanovic Mokranjac, Music composer (1856-1914)

While studying in Munich (with J. Rheinberger), Rome (with A. Parisotti) and Leipzig (with S. Jadassohn), Mokranjac developed a strong interest in several fields, becoming an active contributor to the art of music. From 1887 until his twilight years he was a conductor of the Belgrade Singers' Society, leading performances all over the world. 
Mokranjac was also distinguished as an organizer of music life and as a teacher. He was one of the founders of the first music school in Serbia, which was established in Belgrade in 1899 and bears his name to this day. In addition, he was a chamber ensemble musician (a member of the first string quartet in Serbia) and a melographer - he recorded and studied folk songs and folk church singing. 
His central work is the Fifteen Garlands - rhapsodies for a cappella choir. They consist of a number of folk tunes, which Mokranjac treated with a refined gift for latent harmonic features of the selected songs. 
In the field of Orthodox Church music, Mokranjac was predominantly inspired by folklore. The character of his music is somewhat cognate with the spirit of medieval fresco painting in Serbian monasteries. Listen to the message that Stevan Stojanovic Mokranjac is sending to us through the time...
http://www.sv-luka.org/chants/
http://www.rastko.org.yu/muzika/crkveno_horsko.html
http://www.serbhelp.on.ca/requiem.html
http://www.suc.org/culture/art/Mokranjac/
http://www.beograd.com/mokranjac/
http://www.beograd.com/mokranjac/2.html
http://www.masonicinfo.com/famous.htm
http://www.pgp-rts.co.yu/katalog/izdanja/860461.html
http://spc.org.yu/Pravoslavlje/762/prvo_beogradsko_l.html


Vasilije Mokranjac, Music composer (1923-1984) 

Vasilije Mokranjac is one of the greatest Serbian composers of the 20th century. In spite of great professional and public recognition Vasilije Mokranjac avoided publicity. Introvert by nature and devoted to the consuming quest for the cognition of the truths of life and art, he was reluctant to follow any superficial musical, social or other fashion.
He composed five symphonies, three overtures, several concertos for piano and orchestra, Symphonietta for strings and Lyrical Poem, which is one of the most beautiful pieces of Serbian orchestral music. Several of his compositions were devoted to piano solo, as well as the cycles: Studies, Dances, Fragments, Intimacies, Echoes, Preludes.
Even though the piano, as an instrument of the composer's intimate world, played an important role in the creative work of Vasilije Mokranjac, a complete insight into his personality is provided in his symphonic works. The orchestra followed all the stages of Mokranjac's work, from his student days at the Belgrade Academy of Music, where he studied composition and orchestration and also piano, until the last days of his life, when he worked in solitude in the atmosphere of Beethovenesque tragedy of creation and existence.
http://www.rastko.org.yu/isk/isk_17.html
http://www.library.cornell.edu/cts/compose2.htm#m
http://www.beograd.com/prva/mangupi.ht


Ljubica Maric, Music composer (1909-   )

Ljubica Maric is one of the most interesting personalities in modern Serbian music. She is known for her passionate interest in the search for a new sound and expression, as well as for her thoughtful, philosophical preoccupations which are the basis of some of her most significant works. She studied in Belgrade with Josip Slavenski and in Prague with J. Suk and A. Haba. In addition she attended courses in conducting given by N. Malko in Prague and H. Scherchen in Strasbourg. She was a professor at the Belgrade Academy of Music and she is a corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Her hitherto most significant work is the cantata Songs of Space, in which there are seven lapidary inscriptions from medieval tomb monuments of Bosnian Bogumils - touching expression of never ending contemplations on life and death - shaped in bold means of expression to form an impressive musical entity. Likewise, very interesting is the cycle The Music of Octoechos, based on the tunes from the Serbian Octoechos, which were amalgamated with up-to-date idiom in an original manner. Lately, Maric is composing exclusively chamber music. Her pieces are performed all around the world.
http://www.suc.org/culture/history/Hist_Serb_Culture/cho/Musical_Composition.html
http://www.furore-verlag.de/deutsch/buch.html
http://www.furore-verlag.de/english/noten.html#zeitgenosse
http://libweb.uoregon.edu/music/pamphlets.html
http://www.musicaviva.com/encyclopedia/m.html
http://brazil.tcimet.net/arch/odrazb/n_970403/txt/0424971.htm#3.3


Dragutin Gostuski, Music composer, musicologist, and art historian (1923-1998)

Dragutin Gostuski is the author of the capital study in the field of comparative aesthetics - The Time of Art, and the author of the book Music science as a model for an interdisciplinary research. He worked at the Institute for Musicology at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Gostuski composed music for orchestra, piano solo, chamber ensembles, choir, and ballet ("The Drawn Game"). Several of his music pieces won some of the most prestigious awards in the world.
Gostuski published his theoretical works in journals such as the Musical Quarterly and (Bostonian) Atlantic, for which he wrote the famous study about Yugoslav music together with co-authors Ivo Andric, Miroslav Krleza, and Stevan Radojicic. He lectured on Yugoslav music in UNESCO palace, in Paris in 1959. Gostuski also took a notable part at many international conferences and music festivals.
http://www.nin.co.yu/arhiva/2505/10.html
http://www.suc.org/news/duga/archive/1670/tema.html
http://www.yurope.com/people/sen/prezentacije/alt.beograd/arhiva1/0164.html

" Levicari-intelektualci niti imaju ideologiju, ni praktican, odredjen program, ni jasnu predstavu o svom i tudjem mestu u istoriji. No, po prirodi stvari, imali bi u odredjenom trenutku ogromnu moc kojom bi se neizbezno posluzili da ceo ovaj svet povuku u propast. Ja to najozbiljnije mislim. " (Dragutin Gostuski, NIN 1979.g.)
" Left-oriented intellectuals neither have an ideology, nor a practical, specific program, nor a clear vision of their own and other people's place in history. However, by the very nature of things, in a certain moment they would possess an extreme power that they would inevitably use to bring this world into an abyss and a destruction. I believe this most seriously. ." (Dragutin Gostuski, NIN 1979.)
http://www.nin.co.yu/arhiva/2400/tema.html
 


POETRY AND LITERATURE 
Ivo Andric, Author, Nobel Laureate (1892-1975)

Ivo Andric was born in Travnik (Bosnia). He studied philosophy in Vienna, Krakow and Graz, where he received a doctorate in 1924. In 1911, Andric began publishing his works, mainly poetry and prose. From 1920 to 1941 he served as the ambassador of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to Germany and after WWII, he worked as professional writer. Ivo Andric won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1961. His works have been translated and published in most of the main world languages.
For more information about Ivo Andric and his literary work, see
http://suc.suc.org/culture/history/Hist_Serb_Culture/chr/html/Ivo_Andric.html
http://www.yurope.com/people/sen/The.Book.Of.Home/poezija/ivo.andric/index.html
http://suc.suc.org/culture/history/Hist_Serb_Culture/chr/html/Ivo_Andric.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search/102-9495533-7242438? mode=books&tag=nobelprizeintern&keyword=Andric,%2BIvo


Milorad Pavic, Author (1929 – )

Serbian prose writer and poet, historian of Serbian literature of XVII - XIX century, expert on Serbian Baroque and symbolistic poetry, translator of Pushkin and Byron, university professor (lectures at New Sorbonne, Vienna, Novi Sad, Freiburg, Regensburg, Belgrade), full Member of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (elected 1991), member of Société Européenne de Culture and of the International Council of the Moscow periodical "Inostrannaya Literatura." 
Pavic is the author of four novels, several books of poetry, four volumes of short stories and one play. One of his most famous works is the Dictionary of the Khazars.
Pavic’s work has had 73 translations (in separate books) in different languages through the world. Milorad Pavic was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature by experts in Europe, US and Brazil.
Biography adapted from the official Milorad Pavic homepage


Jovan Ducic, Poet and Diplomat (~1872–1943)

Born in Trebinje, Herzegovina, Ducic became a school teacher in Bijeljina and Mostar. However, he was soon forced to move to a monastery school in Zitomislic by the Austro-Hungarian government due to his openly expressed Serbian patriotism (*at that time Bosnia-Herzegovina was de facto incorporated into the Austro-Hungarian Empire while parts of Serbia reserved independence). Ducic subsequently pursued higher studies in Switzerland and entered Serbian diplomatic service in 1907. He served in Istanbul, Sofia, Rome, Athens, Cairo, Madrid and Lisabon and he also became the first Yugoslav ambassador to Romania in 1937. Ducic spoke several foreign languages and he is remembered as a distinguished diplomat. More importantly, Ducic endowed us with a wealth of Serbian poetry, depicting romantic love, love for God and love for his home country – Serbia.
For more information about Jovan Ducic and his poems, see http://www.trebinje.com/Ducic/


Charles Simic, Poet and Professor of English (1938– )

Charles Simic was born on May 9, 1938, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. In 1953 he left Yugoslavia with his mother and brother to join his father in the United States. They lived in and around Chicago until 1958. His first poems were published in 1959, when he was twenty-one. In 1961 he was drafted into the U.S. Army, and in 1966 he earned his Bachelor's degree from New York University. His first full-length collection of poems, What the Grass Says, was published the following year. Since then he has published more than sixty books in the U.S. and abroad, among them Jackstraws (Harcourt Brace, 1999), which was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times; Walking the Black Cat (Harcourt Brace, 1996), which was a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry; A Wedding in Hell (1994); Hotel Insomnia (1992); The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems (1990), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Selected Poems: 1963-1983 (1990); and Unending Blues (1986). He has also published many translations of French, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, and Slovenian poetry, and four books of essays, most recently Orphan Factory (University of Michigan Press, 1998). He was also the guest editor of The Best American Poetry 1992. Elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2000, his many awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Since 1973 he has lived in New Hampshire, where he is Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire.
For more information, visit the page at http://www.poets.org/
 


SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 
Mihailo I. Pupin, Serbian-American Inventor, Electrical Engineer, Scientist, Educator, and Pulitzer Prize Winner, (1858-1935)

Mihailo (Michael) Pupin is the inventor of X-ray photography method still in universal use. In his 1899 essay, entitled "Transmission Over Non-Uniform Conductors," Pupin provided the first mathematical treatment of electrical transmission. This theory is the foundation of the modern electrical filters that are used intensly in data transmission. Pupin devised a means of greatly extending the range of long-distance telephone communication by placing loading coils (of wire) at predetermined intervals along the transmitting wire. Pupin revolutionized telephonic cable transmission by developing a new type of artificial line to be used in duplex underground and submarine telephone cables. His invention greatly extended the range of telephone's long-distance use. Pupin taught at Columbia University from 1889-1935, lecturing in mathematical physics. Physics Department at Columbia University bears his name to this day. Pupin received the Pulitzer Prize for his autobiography "From Immigrant to Inventor."
http://www.imp.bg.ac.yu/mpupin/e-index.htm
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/4/0,5716,63504+1,00.html
http://www.cinemedia.net/SFCV-RMIT-Annex/rnaughton/PUPIN_BIO.html
http://www.astro.columbia.edu/~ff/pupin.html
http://phys.columbia.edu/Life/pupin.html
http://www.ee.columbia.edu/ee-site/history/history_css.html
http://www.pobjeda.co.yu/arhiva/decembar_99/151299/rubrike/aktuelnosti/ aktuelnosti_1.htm


Nikola Tesla, Serbian-American Inventor, Electrical Engineer, and Scientist, (1856-1943)

Nikola Tesla invented: a telephone repeater, rotating magnetic field principle, polyphase alternating-current system, induction motor, alternating-current power transmission, Tesla coil transformer, wireless communication, radio, fluorescent lights, and more than 700 other patents. The unit for magnetic field is named after Tesla.
http://neuronet.pitt.edu/~bogdan/tesla/
http://www.clpgh.org/exhibit/tesla.html
http://www.yurope.com/org/tesla/muzeje.htm
http://www.tiac.net/users/seeker/wireless.html
http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/tesla/tesla.html
http://www.apc.net/bturner/tesla.htm
http://home.earthlink.net/~drestinblack/teslatoc.htm
http://www.highvoltage.8m.com/
"Prodigal Genius - Biography of Nikola Tesla" by John J.O'Neill


Jovan Karamata, Mathematician (1902-1967)

This most distinguished Serbian analyst is best known for his theory of regularly varying sequences and theorems of Tauberian type (often called "Karamata’s tauberian theorems"). Karamata served as a professor at the University of Belgrade, but moved following WWII due to communist persecution, continuing his work in Switzerland.
Famous Mathematicians: 
http://felix.unife.it/Root/d-Mathematics/d-The-mathematician/t-Mathematicians-A-Z
One example of a widely accepted Karamata’s formalism of regular variation, found in Fractal Modeling in Astrophysics: 
http://www.stsci.edu/stsci/meetings/adassVI/sterni.html
Hardy-Littlewood Tauberian theorem, Eric-Weisstein’s World of Mathematics:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Hardy-LittlewoodTauberianTheorem.html
Aleksandar Nikolic, "Jovan Karamata," 125 years of the Department of Mathematics, Belgrade University: 
http://www.matf.bg.ac.yu/proslava/knjiga/
Famaj matematikistoj: 
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hall/2389/fm_1992.htm


Djuro Kurepa, Mathematician (1907-1993) 

Probably the best known Serbian mathematician of the second half of the twentieth century. Kurepa had an immense influence on the development of mathematics in the former Yugoslavia. He was a professor at the University of Zagreb and, from the sixties, he taught at the University of Belgrade, where he established a strong logic school. Kurepa’s most renowned work is in logic and set theory, and particularly in the tree theory where important notion of "Kurepa tree" bears his name.
Famous Mathematicians:
http://felix.unife.it/Root/d-Mathematics/d-The-mathematician/t-Mathematicians-A-Z
Radoslav Dimitric, Modern Logic 4 (1994) (see also editor’s foreword):
"…noted Serbian logician Djuro Kurepa, whose main contributions were to the theory of ramified sets (pseudo trees) and trees, which he saw as a generalization of both cardinal and ordinal numbers." 
http://www.ed.ac.uk/philosophy/ml/abs4.html#rdi
"…The work of Souslin and Kurepa made it clear how important it is to know whether a given linearly ordered or generalized ordered space has a dense subspace with special metric related propertied…" Steven D. Purisch at The Eighth Prague Topological Symposium, 
http://at.yorku.ca/c/a/a/i/89.htm
Selected Papers of Djuro Kurepa, ISBN: 86-80593-20-6,
Order via Association for Symbolic Logic: http://www.aslonline.org/asl/meetings/ann1997.html#XXX151
or inquire at Mathematical Institute SANU: 
http://www.mi.sanu.ac.yu/publications.htm
Zarko Mijajlovic, "Djuro Kurepa," 125 years of the Department of Mathematics, Belgrade University,
http://www.matf.bg.ac.yu/proslava/knjiga/
"Djuro’s tree" - Modern music piece inspired by the work of Djuro Kurepa
http://www2.ncsu.edu/ncsu/univ_relations/news_services/ press_releases/97_09/315.htm


Mihailo Petrovic - Alas, Mathematician (1868-1943)

Mihailo Petrovic - Alas is the most important Serbian mathematician of the first half of the twentieth century. Educated in Paris during the golden days of French Mathematics, he played a crucial role in establishing mathematics in Serbia. Differential equations and phenomenology represented his main scientific interests. Petrovic was a passionate fisherman, and enjoyed company of ordinary people who knew him simply as "Alas" (fisherman in Serbian).
Dragan Trifunovic, "Barda srpske matematike"
http://alas.matf.bg.ac.yu/~sumf/bit/istorija/alas.html
IX Belgrade High School home page: 
http://www.alas.edu.yu/mika.html
Jovan Keckic, "Mihailo Petrovic," 125 years of the Department of Mathematics, Belgrade University
http://www.matf.bg.ac.yu/proslava/knjiga/
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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