Physics Community in Banovina of Croatia at the Beginning of the 20th Century

Abstract

It is not possible to properly understand either the global or the local development of physics without the knowledge of the structure and dynamics of the physics community - the social group defined by physics as profession. This paper presents a reconstruction of the suitably defined physics community in the Banovima of Croatia at the beginning of the 20th century, i.e. in the year 1901. The reconstructed community comprises 108 members, most of whom completed training in physics by 1901, i.e. they attended a university or/and college of engineering, and passed the secondary school teacher licensing examination or/and rigorosum (PhD distortion) (although some individuals lacking such education are included in the community for reasons expounded in the text). An overall account of the structure of the community is given, stratified with respect to professional positions and levels of formal training in physics. Finally, the basic biographical data are given for each member of the community.