Academician Nikola Hajdin passes away

It is with deep regret that the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts reports that its long standing president and a member, Nikola Hajdin (Vrbovsko, 1923), passed away in Belgrade, on Wednesday, 17 July 2019 after a short and grave illness. He was a great bridge builder, both outside and inside the Academy.

Nikola Hajdin, a renowned Serbian construction engineer, was elected a corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1970, and in 1976 a full member. He served as a vice president of the SASA from 1994 to 2003, and as its president in three terms, from 2003 to 2015.

He was a distinguished author of series of steel and concrete structures. Out of his remarkable opus, the following achievements are singled out: cable-stayed railway bridge over the Sava River in Belgrade (with Lj. Jevtović, 1979); cable-stayed road bridge across the Danube in Novi Sad (1981); arch dam ‘Glažnje’ in Macedonia (1967) and a great cable-stayed bridge across the Vistula River in Poland.

Academician N. Hajdin greatly contributed to the scientific field related to the application of numerical methods in the Theory of Elasticity and Theory of Structural Mechanics, as well as to works in the field of Theory of Thin-Walled Structures. In the last several years, he focused on non-linear dynamic problems of mechanics, particularly on the study of impact of means of transport on civil engineering structures. These papers, most of which were published in Switzerland, have had a significant influence on official recommendations for bridge calculations, especially for bridge pier impact in Switzerland. The scientific opus of Academician Nikola Hajdin includes over 230 papers (nearly half of which has been published abroad in the most eminent journals), cited over 300 times abroad and several hundred times in the country.

He was a professor of the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Belgrade. He received his doctoral degree in technical sciences in 1956, at the same faculty. He was elected a research fellow of the Faculty of Civil Engineering in 1958, assistant professor in 1960, associate professor in 1961, and full professor in 1966. In addition to this, he was a visiting professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich from 1971 to 1973, and a visiting scholar of the Swiss Association for Steel Structures.

Over the course of his professional career, Academician N. Hajdin held a wide variety of scientific and professional posts in various domestic and foreign associations. He was the president of the Yugoslav group of the International Association for Bridge ans Structural Engineering (IABSE), and a member of the Permanent Committee of this organization, president of the Yugoslav Committee of the International Union for Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, dean of the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Belgrade, and the president of the Yugoslav Association of Structural Engineers.

He was also a foreign member of several academies: the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Academy of Athens, European Academy of Sciences, Arts and Literature seated in Paris, European Academy of Sciences and Arts in Salzburg and European Academy of Sciences in Liege, as well as member of numerous professional associations and committees. He was elected an honorary doctor of the National Technical University of Athens in 2000.

He received a multitude of recognitions and awards such as: the October Prize of the City of Belgrade (1959), the October Prize of the City of Novi Sad (1981), the AVNOJ Award (1987), the first prize for the project of a bridge over the Vistula River in Plock, Poland (1996); Labour Day Order with a Golden Wreath (1979); Order of National Merit with a Golden Wreath (1987) and Saint George Plaque Award of the City of Kragujevac (2011).