THE INFLUENCE OF SERBS FROM THE SOUTHERN HUNGARY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN SERBIA IN THE 19TH CENTURY – TWO CHARACTERISTIC EXAMPLES

Abstract

During the second half of the 18^th and the first half of the 19^th century, the development of education in Serbian communities in the Balkans and in Southeastern Europe was influenced by modern ideas. These ideas came among  Serbs with only a few decades of delay. As with other peoples in the Balkans, Serbs also had their own characteristics. One of them was that the geopolitical influence of the great powers of Russia and Austria intersected in this area. These countries intended, through culture and education, to bind the educated elite of Serbs to themselves and thus pursue their interests. Also, the Serbian Orthodox Church, which was the carrier of education for Serbs in the 18^th century, fought to protect itself, with the help of Orthodox Russia, from the influence of the Catholic Church.
Typical c representatives of Serbs from the area north of the Sava and Danube, who have made a great contribution to establishing higher education in Serbia and who can certainly be considered to be the founders of studying natural sciences in Serbia, are Atanasije Nikolić and Vuk Marinković. The first, was an engineer by education and the second was a doctor. However, due to great energy, love for science and patriotism, they have become the pioneers of modern science and higher education in Serbia. They formed the first departments of their sciences in Serbia and wrote the first textbooks for them.

Atanasije Nikolić was born in the vicinity of Sombor in 1803. He came to Serbia in 1839. At Lyceum (from which the Belgrade University would be established later) he was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Art Drawing. He immediately wrote textbooks for his subjects Algebra (1839) and Elementary Geometry (1841). These were the first higher education textbooks on these subjects in Serbia. At the same time he was appointed аs the first Rector of Lyceum. Nikolić founded the first engineering school in Serbia, which worked from 1846-1849. Another distinguished employee in the field of education in Serbia, originally from the area north of the Sava and Danube was Vuk Marinković. He was a doctor from Novi Sad who would become a professor and writer of the first textbook on physics in Serbia. He improved his teaching at the Lyceum in Belgrade to the university level and wrote the first physics textbooks. His two-volume textbooks Principles of Physics, Natural History, and Atlas with Natural History have been reprinted and awarded multiple times. With these textbooks, he created the foundation for the division of natural sciences among Serbsand introduced the terminology that has persisted to this day.