detail from: KRK Art dizajn

Star of Serbian science - prof. dr Pavle Savić

SIMO JELAČA, Ph.D.

Pavle Savić (1909-1994) Serbian scientist of world renown, whose star shone in Paris and then shone permanently over the Serbian sky. Serbian physical chemist, proved himself scientifically by working in Paris with Irene Joliot-Curie, daughter of Marie Curie.

He was born in Thessaloniki, Greece, where his parents, mother Ana and father Petar, happened to be while his father was working in Greece as a veterinarian. His father Petar studied in Paris, where he completed veterinary medicine. Pavle's mother Anna was a very strong personality and devoted as a mother. She raised five children, Pavle was their eldest, and had two brothers and two sisters. And Ana's brother, Pavle's uncle, Kosta Stojanović, graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of the Great School in Belgrade, together with Mika Alas, and wrote a very extensive manuscript "On the importance of mathematics in education". As an excellent student, he became an assistant at the department of physics and published the work "Atomistics - a part from the philosophy of Ruđer Bošković", in which excerpts from Bošković's work "Theory of Natural Philosophy" were published for the first time in Serbian. Here, Pavle Savić had the opportunity to read scientific works in his early youth and from his uncle he inherited the roots for physical chemistry and nuclear sciences, which would become his profession, which he completed and practiced and became famous for.

Due to the type of service of Pavle's father, the family often moved, so during the Balkan Wars and the First World War they lived in Svilajnac, where Pavle started elementary school. After the end of the war, they moved to Belgrade, where Pavle continued and finished elementary school and entered the Second Belgrade High School. He was taught by the famous Serbian greats Mihajlo Petrović-Alas and Milutin Milanković. He passed his high school graduation in Požarevac. During high school, he showed great interest in mathematics, physics and chemistry. He studied physical chemistry at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade and graduated in 1932. In his generations, very few students studied physical chemistry, one or not even one per year.

After completing his military service, he worked at the Department of Physics at the Faculty of Philosophy, under Professor Stojiljković, with whom he came into conflict, and then transferred to the Faculty of Medicine, at the Department of Physics, under Professor Dragoljub Jovanović, a former colleague of Marija Kiri. Pavle Savić did not get a doctorate, in his time it was neither necessary nor unusual for university professors. Belgrade University awarded Pavle Savić an honorary doctorate in 1957. Together with Professor Jovanović, he published his first scientific paper "On colorimetric measurement of radium gamma radiation absorption".

Professor Jovanović proposed Pavle Savić for a scholarship from the French government, which he received for six months in 1935, with Irene Joliot-Curie, and as he soon proved to be very capable, the French government extended his scholarship for five years, until 1939. when he had to leave France due to the start of World War II. And Irene Joliot suggested to Pavlo to continue his research on the discoveries of gaseous products of Fission, and to supplement them in the form of a dissertation, but there was no more time for that because of the war.

Pavle Savić and Irena Žolio-Curie discovered isotopes of elements from uranium atoms by bombarding them with slow barium neutrons. Thus, they were the first in the world to realize the process of fission (splitting of atoms). In parallel, with them, Lise Meitner and her cousin Otto Robert Frisch made the same discovery, which, unfortunately, they delivered to Otto Hahn.

Working together, Pavle Savić and Irena Žolio-Kiri discovered elements that they calculated to be numbers 93 and 94 according to the Mendelian system of elements, similar to radium and osmium. However, the behavior of those elements was more similar to actinium (atomic number 89). During January 1939, while Irena and Frederik were on vacation, Pavle worked alone at the institute and experimentally proved that the decay of the uranium atom, in addition to the element number 56 (barium), also produces the noble gas krypton (atomic number 36), with a half-life of 20 minutes. It completely matched the Fission process. That year, Pavle also participated in measurements of the neutron fission cross section, which later became the basis for calculations of chain reactions in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Today, the French consider Irena Žolio-Curie and Pavle Savić to be the discoverers of the Fission process.

Pavle Savić was nominated for the Nobel Prize with Irene Joliot-Curie in 1939, but the prize was not awarded at that time due to the start of the war, and Otto Hahn intervened in the process of awarding the Nobel Prize to Irene Joliot-Curie and her husband Frederic Joliot, suggested that they deny their findings, as wrong, because he, on the contrary, will be forced to refute them, and that would be very embarrassing for him. How he only pretended to be well-intentioned, but in essence he was rotten to the core. Of course, Pavle did not accept it and later Otto himself admitted his mistake. As soon as he received a paper from Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn published Lisa Meitner's work as his own, without even mentioning Lisa Meitner, in that work. That's how Otto Hahn won the Nobel Prize alone in 1945, while Pavle Savić and Irena Žolio-Kiri lost it by just one, single vote. Not even before the Nobel committee did Otto Hahn mention Lisa Meitner, nor Irene Joliot-Curie and Pavle Savić. Well, those are the facts of the kind of man he was. It is probably a fact that economically and politically stronger countries make decisions in the Nobel Committee, so the committee's explanation is that Irena was already a Nobel Prize winner. And they didn't care about Pavle Savić, the true creator of the Fission process, because he was a Serb.

Upon his return from Paris, Pavle Savić immediately joined the national liberation movement, and on Tito's order, one of his first tasks was to install a radio station for communication with Moscow. During the war, with his wife Branka, he worked on encryption for the Supreme Headquarters and NOV. He was the vice president of AVNOJ and a member of the NOV military mission in Moscow. In 1944, he participated in the Antifascist Assembly of the People's Liberation of Serbia and was elected a member of the Presidency, and later became the President of the Economic Council of Serbia. At the third session of AVNOJ in 1945, he was elected a member of the Legislative Committee and a member of the Constituent Assembly. He was a member of the Federation Council, holder of the Partisan certificate of service in 1941, and a number of other awards, including the Order of Heroes of Socialist Labor and the Order of National Liberation.

The career of Pavle Savić at the University of Belgrade, after the war, was: Professor and long-term head of the Department of Physical Chemistry at the Faculty of Philosophy (Faculty of Science and Mathematics), then Vice-Rector of the University of Belgrade and corresponding and then regular Academician at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU ) and its president.

He spent his studies in Moscow and worked at the Institute of Physical Problems with the Russian Nobel Laureate Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, Lev Landon and Alexander Shalynikov. They investigated ultra-low temperatures, close to absolute zero (-273.16 degrees C). At those temperatures, all substances change to a solid state except for helium, which remains liquid at those temperatures. And in that field, Pavle Savić solved the problem of the creep of liquid helium, which until then was unsolvable in the world.

From 1946, Pavle Savić accepted the task of building the Nuclear Institute in Vinča, of which he became the director after the construction and equipping of the institute. In Vinča, Pavle Savić pushed for fundamental research, instead of importing foreign technologies. He was a member of all Yugoslav Academies of Sciences, a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1958), the New York Academy of Sciences (1960), the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1970) and the Athens Academy of Sciences (1975). He was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in 1946, and a regular member two years later. President of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts SANU, elected three times in a row (from 1971 to 1981). From 1981 President of SANU was Dusan Kanazir.

He published the books: "From Atoms to Heavenly Bodies" (1978) and "Science and Society" (1978). He has published numerous scientific works in the country and around the world, based on which he has received numerous recognitions from prominent world experts.

In Vinča, Pavle Savić managed to separate hydrogen, which is a key reaction in the creation of "Heavy Water", and it is one of the elementary particles for the creation of an atomic bomb. That result was scientifically announced in 1955 in Geneva at the International Conference on Peaceful Applications of Atomic Energy. Heavy water plays a significant role as a neutron modulator in nuclear fission reactions. With his associate Academician Radivoj Kašanin (1892-1989), he made four extensive studies "Behavior of materials under high pressure", which were translated into English and Russian and printed as a unique book.

Among the numerous awards he received: the Order of Heroes of Socialist Labor (1979); He received the French Order of Officer of the Legion of Honor twice (1065 and 1976); Rutherford Medal (1979); Lomonosov Gold Medal (1982); Kurnikov Medal (1981); Mendeleev Silver Medal (1984); Silver Medal of the City of Paris (1984); Medal "40 years of victory in the Great Patriotic War 1041-1945" (1985) and others. He is the recipient of the Seventh of July Award of Serbia (1950) and the AVNOJ award (1966).

On January 31, 2024, the French Embassy in Belgrade and the Ministries of Science and Technology of France and Serbia celebrated the 20th anniversary of French-Serbian scientific cooperation under the name "Pavle Savić". During those 20 years of successful cooperation, 173 joint scientific projects were financed.

The legendary actor Predrag Miki Manojlović in Dragan Bjelogrlić's film "Guardians of the Formula" brought to life the character of Academician Pavle Savić, who created Vinča. Pavle Savić was awarded the highest Yugoslav and international awards, the League of Honor medal, the Lomonosov Gold Medal and the Honor of the University of Belgrade. Pavle Savić scientifically united Serbia and France.

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pavle Savić (1909-1994), the Post Office of Serbia issued a special postage stamp in his honor with his image.

Pavle Savić was a scientist and revolutionary, he split uranium atoms and walked along scientific paths that others had not taken before him.

The scientific star of Pavle Savić shone over the Serbian sky, shining and will shine for a long time, which made him a solid giant, who reached global heights.

Pavle Savić died on May 30, 1994 in Belgrade.

On this occasion, the author expresses his sincere gratitude to the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) in Belgrade for the grants he received, which he could not have gotten otherwise.

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