ZAGREB, October 20, 2019 - A centre dedicated to the life and work of the great Croatian scientist Andrija Mohorovičić was opened in his birthplace Volosko.
The centre is to serve as a place for the interaction of research and cultural and tourism organisations and associations, visited by children, young people, tourists and passers-by, its purpose being to acquaint visitors with historical facts about Mohorovičić's birthplace.
Rajka Šepić-Jurdana of the University of Rijeka's Physics Department said that this was the first stage of a project designed to present Mohorovičić's achievements in the field of meteorology, seismography and geophysics, while the second stage would include the construction and equipment of rooms for an interactive study of phenomena studied by Mohorovičić.
Mohorovičić, who was born in Volosko in 1857 and died in Zagreb in 1936, was a Croatian geophysicist as well as a prominent researcher in the fields of meteorology and seismology.
After studying mathematics and physics in Prague, he worked as a high school teacher in Zagreb and Osijek and later at the Maritime School in Bakar, where he taught meteorology and in 1887 established a weather station.
Since 1892 he headed the meteorological observatory in Zagreb, which ran all weather stations in the then Croatian Banovina.
He earned his PhD degree in Zagreb in 1893 and became a member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (JAZU) in 1898 while in 1910 he became an associate professor of geophysics and astronomy.
Mohorovičić's most important discovery is the boundary between the Earth's crust and mantle - a boundary subsequently named the Mohorovičić discontinuity.
He was the first to establish the accurate time service in the region. A Moon crater and an asteroid were named after him and the Geophysics Institute of the Zagreb Faculty of Science and a secondary modern school in Rijeka bear his name.
More science news can be found in the Lifestyle section.
