Живот и дело српских научника

Abstract

Intellectual creativeness, awareness of truth and virtue, rise and fall of mankind, are best reflected in science and art. Therefore, contemplation about those two forms of creativeness represents a noble and responsible challenge. From one side, those that have laid the foundations of the house of our science, should permanently be saved from sinking into oblivion, and their scientific accomplishments should be critically accessed. It should also be perceived to what extend they had belonged to the time they lived and whether they had left deep traces to present science and researchers, who, without any inclining, ask the same questions, but in another language, and provide the similar answers. Today science develops very rapidly and some of its disciplines are even bordering with issues that intellect can conceive and ethics accept. Therefore, it often appears that everything that science investigates or studies today, seems like a complete novelty, and that old discoveries have lost its vital forces. The result of such an attitude is that, paradoxally, contemporary science obsoletes more rapidly, and that the time-span in which it can express valuable attitudes to the researchers, is shorter. Endevours that represent real research today, tomorrow could be transformed into abstraction, a single hypothesis in a row of many hypothesis, abandoned even more rapidly in the quest of new challenges and goals. According to some data, from the beginning of the New Era to 1970, a number of new scientific achievements have doubled. But the next doubling will be achieved in the following 150 years, then in 50 years, and subsequently, in only 10 years. Another example shows that in 1800 there was one thousand of scientists and engineers, and in 1950 that number increased to a million. Even these rough numbers clearly point to the tremendous expansion of the science, especially of those fields and disciplines that are of importance for nutrition, health and defense. Increased investments in research activities are a point of departure for its quick application, a request for invested resources to return, back as soon as possible, and to multiply „scientific capital" more intensively. From one side, development of fundamental sciences that need larger investments, is slowing down, because a researcher can not positively anticipate in advance, what and when he will discover, and on the other side, as a consequence, the history of science becomes less and less a part of educational process for the young scientist. In that way the continuity is interrupted and connection with life roots, that has sprout scientific thought, is disconnected. Therefore, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts has formed the Committee for the research into the lives and work of the Serbian scientists. The first book was published in 1996, and till today, six books of the edition Lives and work of the Serbian Scientists have been published. This edition covers the lives and work of the Serbian scientists in the field of natural, technical and medical sciences. Till now, works of 85 Serbian scientists, from certain scientific fields were studied, respectively from: astronomy 1, physics 1, geography 4, mechanics 5, chemistry 9, technical sciences 8, medical sciences 9, geology 11, biotechnical sciences 11, biology 12 and from mathematics 14. It is planned to study lives and work of 217 Serbian scientists from the XIX and the XX century. They have been selected among greater number of scientists. The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts expects that this edition will be of a permanent character and will be published as long as there are Serbian scientists. Academician Miloje R. Sarić