Academician Milosav Marjanović passed away

It is with deep regret that the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA) announces the passing of its full member Milosav Marjanović aged 92 (b. Nikšić, 24 August 1931), one of our foremost mathematicians, on 9 May 2023, Belgrade, who gave a particular contribution to the study of topology and mathematical didactics.

Academician Marjanović’s major scientific results are related to the topological classification of space of closed sets. Together with R. Tomović and S. Stanković, he gave a precise mathematical conceptualization of morphological type of line figures, the solution that represents a basis for machine manuscript reading.

He graduated in mathematics from the Faculty of Science in Belgrade in 1955. He was elected a teaching assistant in 1957, at the same Faculty. The 1959/60 school year he spent at the Mathematical Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw under J. Mikusinski and R. Sikorski, distinguished Polish mathematicians. He received his PhD defending the doctoral dissertation titled ‘Moore-Smith Convergence in General Topology’ in 1964. During this year, he was elected an assistant professor at the Faculty of Science in Belgrade. He was elected an associate professor in 1969 and a full professor in 1980. During the 1967/68 school year, he pursued his post-doctoral studies at the University of Florida in Gainesville, USA, where he collaborated with renowned Dutch mathematician J. de Groot. From 1995, he worked as a professor of the methodology of mathematics at the Teacher Training Faculty in Belgrade.

As a corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, he was elected in 1976 and for its full member in 1991. He delivered his accession speech titled ‘Spaces of Closed Sets’ on 11 May 1992.

He participated in numerous scientific conferences in the country and abroad, and as a visiting professor, he gave lectures at various universities and institutes, some of which are as follows: Lomonosov Moscow State University, Steklov Mathematical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Mathematical Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Graz University of Technology.

Steadfastly he worked on the Improvement of mathematical education at the University of Belgrade, updating the existent courses in content and methodology, at the same time including new ones such as Algebraic Topology, Category Theory and Morse Theory. He is the author of multiple university textbooks such as: ‘Metrical Spaces’; ‘Lebesgue–Stieltjes Integration’ (Publisher: Naučna knjiga, Belgrade 1968); Mathematical Analysis (Publisher: Naučna knjiga, Belgrade, 1993); ‘’Topology’ (Publisher: Faculty of Mathematics, Belgrade, 1990); Methodology of Mathematics (Publisher: Teaching Training Faculty, Belgrade, 1996).

He was an honorary member of the Mathematical Society of Serbia, and the editor-in-chief of the journal The Teaching of Mathematics.

In 1973, he received the October Prize of the City of Belgrade for his extraordinary scientific results.

With his scientific and educational work, he gave a major contribution to the development of science in Serbia, as well as the advancement of mathematics teaching at the University of Belgrade. He was also a longstanding president of the Academy Board for Education.

His departure represents a great loss to the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and overall science.