Andrija Mohorovičić

Andrija Mohorovičić
Portrait of Andrija Mohorovičić
Born	23 January 1857 Volosko near Opatija, Croatia
Died	December 18, 1936(1936-12-18) (aged 79) Zagreb, Yugoslavia
Known for	eponym for the Mohorovičić discontinuity

Andrija Mohorovičić (23 January 1857 – 18 December 1936) was a Croatian meteorologist and seismologist. He is best known for the eponymous Mohorovičić discontinuity and is considered as one of the founders of modern seismology.

Mohorovičić was born in Volosko, Opatija, where his father (also named Andrija), was a blacksmith, making anchors. The younger Andrija also loved the sea and married a captain's daughter, Silvija Vernić. They had four sons. Mohorovičić obtained his elementary education in his home town, then continued at the gymnasium of neighbouring Rijeka. He received his higher education in mathematics and physics at the Faculty of Philosophy in Prague in 1875, where one of his professors was Ernst Mach. At 15, Mohorovičić knew Italian, English and French. Later he learned German, Latin and Ancient Greek.

He taught first at high school in Zagreb (1879–1880), then at secondary school in Osijek. From 1882, he taught for nine years at the Royal Nautical School in Bakar, near Rijeka. Work started or completed there was important to his later scientific career. From 1893, when he became a corresponding member of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb, to 1917–18 he taught in the fields of geophysics and astronomy. In 1898 he became a full member of what was then the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb, where he was a private docent. In 1910 he became titular associate university professor.