Јован Цвијић : (1865-1927)

Abstract

Jovan Cvijić was born at Loznica on October 12, 1865, and died in Belgrade on January 16, 1927. He completed the lower levels of his education at Loznica, Sabac and Belgrade, and graduated from the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Belgrade 1888. His postgraduate studies took him to Vienna where his doctoral dissertation entitled Das Karstphaenomen won him his doctors degree. In March 1893 he was appointed professor of the High School, and in February 1905, with seven other eminent scientists and educators he received permanent chair at the Unviersity. Between 1894 and 1907 he taught the entire field of geography. He was twice elected rector: in 1907/08 and 1919/20 school years. During his second mandate he helped establish five faculties and restore the war-damaged university building. From 1921 to 1927, he was president of the Academy of Sciences. Commissioned by the Serbian government, he performed important political assignments in London in 1906 and 1915, and in Paris, Rome and Athens in 1915. At the Peace Conference in Versailles in 1919/20, he chaired the historical-ethnographic sectin of our experts, and made an important contribution to the incorporation of Banat, Baka, Baranja and Dalmatia into our state. At the invitation from eminent French geographers, he lectured at the Sorbonne on Balkan peoples and lands during 1917, 1918 and 1919. Cvijid founded the earliest geographic institutions and associations in the Balkan Peninsula, the Geographic Institute in 1893, and the Serbian Geographic Society in 1910, as well as the Journal of the Serbian Geographic Society in 1910. He also launched a geographic seminar to train his students in field research. Between 1902 and 1927, he published within the Academy of Sciences 24 large volumes entitled Settlements and Origins of the Populations, which included 60 monographs by his collaborators. The latter pursued his geographic thought and initiated organized team research in this country. Between 1888 and 1925, Cvijić conducted systematic exploration of the Balkan and other countries, covering an area of 500,000 square kilometres. A major part of his time was spent in exploring Eastem and Old Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria and the carst areas in the Dinaric Alps. For a while he studied geotectonic and glaciological problems, then he devoted himself to carst research, and in his more mature years his interest centred on anthropo-geographic and ethnographic questions. Jovan Cvijic." published 47 works on the relief and hydrography of the carst. His most valuable results were those published in Das Karstphaenomen, Carst polja zapadne Bosne i Hercegovine, and La geographie des terrains calcaires. There he explained the origin and development of all carst formations and the extremely complex water circulation in the carst. With these works Cvijić won fame as founder of the carst science into which he introduced several Serbian words as scientific terms (uvala, ponor, polje, hum, dolina). In Rila and many Dinaric mountains he discovered traces of pleistocene glaciers, repudiating the claims by illustrious foreign glaciologists that there was no glacial age in the Balkan Peninsula. His major glaciological findings were set out in his studies Glaciation of Rila and The Ice Age in the Prokletije Mountains. Exploring the large mountain systems, basins and tectonically unstable zones, he made an important contribution to tectonic geology, while by studying the old vulcanic relief he advanced knowledge in vulcanology. He was the first among our naturalists to make a systematic study of our lakes, thereby founding limnology in our sicence. The results of his field research in geomorphological and geotectonic problems have been laid out in his two-volume study Geomorfologija on 1094 large format pages. His anthropogeographic research centred on the relationship between man and his geographic environment. His field research led him to establish the principal directions of Balkan population migrations and their complex consequences. He was the first to carry out a scientific classification of settlements based on their positions, types and prevailing functions. He also studied the changes in the economies of the Balkan countries which took place during the 19th and the turn of the 20th centuries. The methodology of his research was explained in his study Anthropogeographic Problems of the Balkan Peninsula, synthetising his findings in the 517 page monograph Balkan Peninsula and the South Slavonic Lands, first published in French in Paris and then in Serbian in Belgrade. In the course of his research Cvijić delved into the problems of historiography, economy and sociology. Examining the effects on man of the surrounding geographic environment and cultural heritage, he developed ethnopsycological research and founded ethnopsychology. A synthesis of all his naturalist, anthropogeographic and ethnographic considerations was published in his three-volume monograph Fundamentals of Geography and Geology of Macedonia and Old Serbia on 1272 pages of large format. His views on the dynamic social processes in this country, his visions of future relations among the South Slavonic peoples, on state organisation and on our abilities for creativeness in sciences and politics were laid out in four volumes of his book Speeches and Writings.