Jovan Cvijić (Serbian Cyrillic: Јован Цвијић, pronounced [jǒʋan tsʋǐːjitɕ]; 11 October [O.S. 29 September] 1865 – 16 January 1927) was a Serbian geographer, ethnologist, university professor and academic. He was the president of the Serbian Royal Academy of Sciences and rector of the University of Belgrade. Cvijić is considered the founder of geography in Serbia. He began his scientific career as a geographer and geologist, and continued his activity as a human geographer and sociologist. He initiated the Serbian Ethnographic Collection (Srpski etnološki zbornik), within which 102 books were published, representing a unique scientific and interdisciplinary project on a global scale. Jovan Cvijić received numerous awards and medals, both domestically and internationally, for his work.
Early life and family Cvijić was born in Loznica, in the westernmost part of the Principality of Serbia. His family was part of the Spasojević branch of the Piva tribe (Pivljani) in Old Herzegovina (currently Montenegro). Cvijić's father, Todor, was a merchant; his grandfather, Živko, was head of Loznica and a supporter of the House of Obrenović in Mačva. Živko fought in the 1844 Katana Uprising against the Defenders of the Constitution, and died after torture. Cvijić's great-grandfather, Cvijo Spasojević, patriarch of the Cvijić family, was a hajduk leader in Old Herzegovina who fought in the First Serbian Uprising against the Ottoman Empire. After its failure in 1813, he moved to Loznica, built a house and opened a store. His father, Todor (d. 1900), was a trader before accepting a clerkship in the municipality. Cvijić's mother, Marija (née Avramović), was from a family in the village of Korenita in the Jadar region (near Tronoša and Tršić, the birthplace of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić). Todor and Marija had two sons, Živko and Jovan, and three daughters. Cvijić often said that in his childhood his spiritual education was primarily influenced by his mother and her family; he said less about his father and his father's family. However, in his works on ethnic psychology, Cvijić praised the Dinaric race of his father.
Education
After completing elementary school, Cvijić attended grammar school in Loznica where he took an interest in literature and learned French and German. He continued his education in Šabac before embarking to the First Belgrade Gymnasium to study medicine, graduating in 1884. After graduation, he wanted to study medicine, but Loznica could not provide him a scholarship to study abroad. A grammar-school teacher suggested that he attend geography classes at the Velika škola in Belgrade. Cvijić took his advice, enrolling in the natural sciences department and graduating in 1889.
Cvijić taught at the Second Male Grammar School in Belgrade and in the meantime published his first geographical work on the karst landscape in 1889 after a trip to the eastern countryside of Serbia piqued his interest. He enrolled at Vienna University where he studied physical geography and geology under the tutelages of scholars like Albrecht Penck, Professor Suess (president of the Austrian Academy) and Julius von Hann. He received his PhD from Vienna University in 1893. His thesis Das Karstphänomen, introduced the sub-discipline study of karst geomorphology. Soon afterwards, Cvijić toured the Balkans to conduct fieldwork and research. In 1911, Cvijić married Ljubica Nikolić, a widow from Belgrade, née Krstić (1879–1941).
Research
Cvijić's work can be compartmentalized into five sections: the karst, glaciations in the Balkan mountains, tectonic elements in the peninsula, lakes and human geography. Much of his research was complicated by the tense political situations with the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman authorities, dangerous and remote areas and lack of suitable roads and maps. In the mid 1890s, Cvijić's excursions took him first to eastern Serbia and then to Bulgaria, where he visited the area around the Rila mountain range. Later, he focused on the mountains of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro, studying the karst and tectonic structure, looking for evidence of glaciations, leading him to publish Papers on the glacial epoch in the Balkan peninsula. He was interested in geology and geomorphology. Cvijić's monograph on lime karst was well received in European scientific circles, and an introductory academic lecture established him as the first South Slavic tectonicist. The Serbian lime fields had been studied only peripherally by Otto von Pirch (1830), Ami Boué (1840), Felix Philipp Kanitz, Milan Milićević, Jovan Žujović and Vladimir Karić before him. Cvijić conducted a pioneering human-geographical survey in "Balkan Peninsula 1918", 1922–I, 1931–II, based on his research of Balkan personality types. He researched for 38 years, leading expeditions in the Balkans, the southern Carpathian Mountains and Anatolia which produced a number of research papers. Cvijić's two-volume Geomorphology is an important starting point for research into the Balkan peninsula.
Karst geomorphology When studying under Albrecht Penck's tutelage he was encouraged to focus on the study of karst phenomena in the northern Dinaric Alps which was a region Penck was already acknowledged with. His first major work was Das Karstphänomen published in 1893. This work was a publication of the key points of his doctoral thesis. Das Karstphänomen was published as a slightly modified translation in Serbo-Croat in 1895. This work describes landforms such as karren, dolines and poljes. In a 1918 publication, Cvijić proposed a cyclical model for karstic landscape development. The results of this work written in French were made accessible to English-language scientists in 1921 when it was commented by E.M. Sanders. Differences in climate and geology were used by Cvijić to explain various shapes and types of karst landforms, sometimes incorrectly. Nevertheless, his views on the role of climate on the development of karst were more accurate than those of various climatic geomorphologists that succeeded him and who greatly exaggerated the role of climate. It has been attributed to Cvijić that the term karst prevailed over Edouard Martel's proposed term "Le Causse". Another terminology usage indebted to Cvijić is that of doline, a term he introduced, and that overlaps with that of sinkhole. Eventually, Cvijić emerged as the "father of karst geomorphology".
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