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Andrija Mohorovičić - The famous Croatian geophysicist

Andrija Mohorovicic, one of the greatest Croatian scientists of all times, was born 150 years ago, on 23 January 1857, in Volosko near Opatija, Croatia. After graduating from the University of Prague he spent the rest of his life in Croatia, working mostly as the professor at the Nautical School in Bakar (1882-1891) and the director of the Meteorological Observatory in Zagreb (1892-1922). He had obtained PhD degree in 1893 at the University of Zagreb and was subsequently engaged as the adjunct professor there. In 1898 he was elected to the Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb. A. Mohorovicic died on 18 December 1936 in Zagreb. In the beginning of his scientific career, Mohorovicic devoted himself to meteorology. His papers covered such diverse topics as a tornado observed in the continental part of Croatia, the climate of Zagreb, and the decrease of air temperature with height. As only recently recognized, Mohorovicic was probably the first to describe a large vortex with horizontal axis, the so-called atmospheric rotor. The finding influenced similar research carried out in England and Germany. Around the turn of the century Mohorovicic switched from meteorology to seismology and soon arrived at his most important discovery. Recordings of the Kupa Valley earthquake of 8 October 1909 made by the state-of-the-art seismographs installed in Zagreb, together with seismograms collected from all over Europe, enabled him to prove the existence of the Earth’ s crust-mantle boundary. After publishing the seminal work, he continued to do important work in seismology by proposing construction of a new seismograph, developing an original method for the location of epicentres, constructing reliable travel-time tables for distant earthquakes, and studying the response of buildings to earthquakes. Andrija Mohorovicic, as only a very few Croatian scientists of international reputation ever, made the whole career in his homeland. Owing to the tradition he initiated, the University of Zagreb is among a few in the world awarding a degree in seismology at the undergraduate level. Today, the boundary he discovered is named after him (the Mohorovicic discontinuity or Moho) as is a crater on the Moon and asteroid 8422.

Andrija Mohorovičić; seismology; Mohorovičić discontinuity

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