Milutin Milankovic 1879 – 1958
Anyone who is interessed to the glaciers and climate changes could not have passed without noticing the name of Milutin Milankovic.Milancovic born in Dajl ( once part of Austro-Hungary, today part of Croatia) in a Serbian wealthy family.He took the first lessons with a private teacher. Since 1889 until 1896 he finished elementary school and secondary school in Osijek, where he was the best student of the class.That year he applied to go in technical school of Vienna, where he would study in the branch of construction engineering.In 1902 he was graduated and two years later he saved the doctorate in technical sciences. His career was in the construction companies, in the construction of hydro-technical systems, and in the construction of Austo-Hungary’s flats. In 1905 Milankovic built a new project for a concrete roof and studied the theories of the reinforced concrete,a new material for the time so he become well-known. With the invitation of Serbian Kingdom’s Ministry of Education, in 1909,Milankovic abandoned his career and his success and took the post of the professor of Philosophy in Beograd,where he gave lectures on the celestian mechanic, theoretical physic and the history of astrology,but with a salary ten times smaller.He decided to work astronomical theory of climate changes without interruptins studies of Ademar and Kral.
He explained temperature changes.
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The First World War interrupted his work in this new direction,when during a tour in Dajl he has captured.Thanks to good relations with some important people in AustroHungary,he managed to pass prision years in the library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest.There he worked on the theory of the climate of the Earth,Mars and Venus.All results were published after the war ,in 1920 in his book “Mathematical history of heating effects caused by solar radiation”. His purpose was: the calculation flux of solar radiation in different geographic latitude,being supported by the laws of celestial mechanic and considering the influence of the Moon and the planets.The result of his calculation was a oscillating functionwith some critical points.Milankovic’s curve was in good accordance with geological data which became well known the theory. The culmination of his work was the publication in 1941 of the book “Laws of radiation of Sun to the Earth and its use in the problem of Global Period. Besides professional duties, Milankovic was the head of Astronomical Obseratory and Ygoslav Astronomical Society. Milutin Milankovic died in Belgrade in 1958