Ivan Đaja (Serbian Cyrillic: Иван Ђаја, French: Jean Giaja; 21 July 1884 – 1 October 1957) was a Serbian biologist, physiologist, author, and philosopher. He was founder of the Chair for physiology at the Serbian Institute for Physiology, rector of the University of Belgrade, and member of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts. Đaja was a popularizer of biology, performed research in the role of the adrenal glands in thermoregulation, as well as pioneering work in hypothermia. He has been described as the "restless researcher of the secret of life", who left a valuable creative and human mark in Serbian society, which was mostly pushed aside in the previous decades.
Early life Đaja was born on 21 July 1884 in Le Havre, a major port in Normandy, France. His mother, Delphine Depois-Auger (1861, Ontere-1902, Belgrade), was French. She was a daughter of the local ship-owner. His father Božidar “Boža” Đaja (1850, Dubrovnik-1914, Hinterbrühl) was a ship master, originally working as a sea captain, later switching to river transportation. They were married in Le Havre in 1881. Ivan was their eldest child. While they were still living in France, the couple had another son, Aleksandar (1885–1968), who later became an agronomist within the Food Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. When Ivan was six, the family moved to Belgrade in 1890, where his father took over as the captain of a steamboat, Deligrad, which was an official diplomatic ship of Serbian rulers. He helmed it until his retirement in 1907. In Belgrade, the couple had a daughter, Olga, their third child (1892–1974). Božidar was also an author; he wrote stories about the life of Dalmatian sailors who worked on the sailing ships and published them in the series of books jointly titled Our Seamen: Apprentice in 1903, Young Man in 1904 and Helmsman in 1909, all three published by the Ilija M. Kolarac Endowment. When he died in Vienna, he left three more manuscripts from the same series, ready for print: Nostromo, Captain, and Old Age.
Education
Đaja finished elementary and high school in Belgrade. After graduating at First Belgrade Gymnasium in 1902, he moved back to France, spending one year as a student at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille at Rouen. He studied philosophy under Émile Chartier. In 1903 he enrolled at the Sorbonne, where one of his fellow students and best friends was Émile Herzog, later famous French author under the name Andre Maurois. He studied natural sciences (botany, physiology and biochemistry) under Albert Dastre, great scientific experimenter, himself a student of Claude Bernard. Đaja gave his final exam in 1905 and, mentored by Dastre, received a PhD on 23 July 1909 with the thesis in physiology Study on ferments of glycosides and carbohydrates in mollusks and crustaceans. During his studying, he also had several jobs. In 1904, he became the youngest foreign correspondent of Serbian daily Politika. Only 20 years old, he became recently established newspaper's reporter from Paris and first foreign correspondent in general. He also worked for a while at National Museum of Natural History with Paul van Tieghem, before spending five years at Marine station in Roscoff, Brittany. Starting in 1906, he worked there with Yves Delage and Albert Dastre, beginning his career as a researcher.
Academic career
University He was invited by the biologist Živojin Đorđević to return to Belgrade from France, where he became a docent at the Faculty of Philosophy. There, that same year, he founded the first chair for physiology in this part of the world, within the Institute for Physiology which he also founded and chaired for 40 years. When World War I broke out in 1914, he was in Vienna, and was kept in confinement, under the Austro-Hungarian police watch, until December 1918. Upon his return to Srbija, Đaja restored the Institute and became associate professor at the university's Faculty of Philosophy in 1919 obtaining the full professorship in 1921. In 1947, when Faculty for mathematics and natural sciences (PMF) split from the Faculty of Philosophy, Đaja became PMF's professor. In 1934 he was elected to the one-year tenure as the rector of the University of Belgrade. He founded and co-founded numerous scientific institutes both in Yugoslavia and abroad, including People's University in Belgrade. He was vice-president of the Red Cross of Yugoslavia in the Interbellum. World War II interrupted his work again, as Đaja staunchly opposed the German-appointed puppet regime in Serbia. He asked to be retired in 1942 and was even confined for a while by the quisling authorities at the Banjica concentration camp. He was reactivated in 1945, both as the professor and head of the Institute for Physiology, before finally retiring in 1955.
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