Milankovitch, Milutin (1879–1958)

MILUTIN MILANKOVITCH, BORN in Dalj, Serbia on May 28, 1879, graduated from the Institute of Technology in Vienna, Austria in 1904. He worked as an engineer in Vienna before returning to Serbia, in 1905, to teach applied mathematics at the University of Belgrade. During the first Balkan War in 1912, he served in the military, assigned to the Danube division of the Serbian army. Milankovitch had begun a project to calculate temperatures at different latitudes and how temperature changed as a result of astronomical rhythms.

His goal was to explain the role played by astronomical cycles on ice ages by determining where various astronomical cycles coincided and combined to influence the amount of solar radiation leading to climate change.

After World War I, Serbia joined with other ...