| Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti (Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts) | |
|---|---|
The building of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, erected in 1922, in Knez Mihailova Street, central Belgrade |
|
| Abbreviation | SANU |
| Formation | 1886 |
| Type | National academy |
| Purpose/focus | Science, arts, academics |
| Headquarters | Belgrade |
| Website | http://www.sanu.ac.rs |
The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Serbian: Српска академија наука и уметности / Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti; САНУ / SANU) is the most prominent academic institution in Serbia today. An institutional outgrowth of the Društvo srpske slovesnosi (Society of Serbian Scholarship), founded in 1841, and of its successor, Srpsko učeno društvo (Serbian Learned Society), founded in 1864, the Serbian Academy was established in 1886 under the name of Kraljevska srpska akademija nauka (Royal Serbian Academy of Sciences).
In the past, the Academy's illustrious membership included Josif Pančić, a well-known European botanist; Jovan Cvijić, an internationally renowned anthropogeographer and geomorphologist; Stojan Novaković, a distinguished historian, statesman and diplomat; Branislav Petronijević, a famous European philosopher, mathematician and paleontologist; Mihajlo I. Pupin, a noted Serbian-American inventor and a long-time Professor of Physics at the University of Columbia; Nikola Tesla, a globally honoured Serbian-American inventor of the Tesla coil, alternating current and more than 700 other patented discoveries; Milutin Milanković, an internationally acclaimed astrophysicist and paleoclimatologist; Mihailo Petrović-Alas, a major mathematician and phenomenologist; and many other outstanding scientists, scholars and artists, both Serbian and foreign. (E.g.: In 1864, the original Society of Serbian Scholarship elected to its membership such international revolutionary figures as Giuseppe Garibaldi, Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Alexander Herzen, and was immediately abolished for this action by the conservative government of Prince Michael Obrenović.)
Contents |
Since the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts was founded by law (as the Serbian Royal Academy) of 1 November 1886, it has been the highest academic institution in Serbia. According to the Royal Academy Founding Act, King Milan was to appoint the first academic, who would then choose other members of the academy. The names of the first academics were announced by King Milan on 5 April 1887. At that time, there existed four sections in the academy, which were then called "specialised academies". Four academics were appointed to each section:
Academy of Natural Sciences
Academy of Philosophy
Academy of Social Sciences
Academy of Arts
The Serbian Royal Academy of Sciences was the successor to the Serbian Learned Society (1864) with which it merged in 1892 and accepted its members as its own either regular or honorary members, its tasks and its place in scientific and cultural life. The same had occurred several decades earlier when the Serbian Learned Society took over the place and functions of the Society of Serbian Scholarship, the first learned society in the Serbian Principality dating back to 1841. The Serbian Royal Academy of Sciences was led by members, such as Jovan Cvijić.
The SANU Memorandum (1986) edited by Serb intellectuals, as well as public officials, referred to in Part I of this Annex, expressed the plight of Kosovo's Serbs. The document was considered by many to be the heralding of a new ethnic nationalism.[1] The paper placed the imprimatur of Serbia's most prestigious intellectuals on the cause of militant Serbian nationalism and was instrumental in spreading anti-Albanian sentiment.[1] Some consider the SANU Memorandum has purpose of reviving the Greater Serbian ideology and to put it into political practice.[2][3]
According to American historian James J. Sadkovich SANU managed to galvanize Croats more than any Croatian far right group.[4]
Today, the Academy directs a number of scientific research projects which are realized in cooperation with other Serbian scientific institutions and through international cooperation.
5. Edited by Sofija Škorić and George Vid Tomashevich, The Serbian Academy After A Century: An Institution at Risk?, published by The Serbian Heritage Academy of Canada, Toronto, 1987. This 77-page Canadian booklet reveals how in the late summer of 1986, the unfinished, unedited and unapproved draft of the incipient document was illegally removed from the Academy's drawers and published without authorization in tendentious selected fragments, quoted and misquoted, taken out of their original context and accompanied by some of the most vitriolic and vituperative political comments against the venerable institution ever printed in the Yugoslav press.
In the ancient tradition of "catch the thief," "blame the victim" and "punish the harbinger of bad news", the Serbian Academy was publicly accused of fomenting and trying to provoke precisely what it wanted to remedy and prevent: the country's economic, political and psychological disintegration which threatens the very survival of Yugoslavia as a multi-national federation as well as the independence, freedom and security of all its component nations and nationalities.
Shortly thereafter, before the end of 1986, xeroxed copies of this unfinished manuscript, began to circulate throughout the country as well as abroad. Provisionally referred to as the Memorandum, the 74-page type-written text has been groundlessly vilified as a nationalist pamphlet and a call to counter-revolution....
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||