Everything about Milutin Milankovitch totally explained
Milutin Milanković (
Serbian Cyrillic: Милутин Миланковић) (
May 28,
1879,
Dalj near Osek (
Osijek/Eszék),
Austria-Hungary (now in
Croatia) –
December 12 1958,
Belgrade,
Serbia) was a
Serbian
civil engineer and
geophysicist, best known for his theory of
ice ages, relating variations of the
Earth's
orbit and long-term
climate change, now known as
Milankovitch cycles.
Beginnings
Milutin Milanković attended the Technische Hochschule in Vienna (today
Vienna University of Technology) where he graduated in
Civil Engineering in
1902 and earned a
doctorate in technical sciences in
1904. Later he worked in the then-famous firm of Adolf Baron Pittel Betonbau-Unternehmung in
Vienna. He built
dams,
bridges,
viaducts,
aquaducts and other structures in reinforced concrete throughout the Austria-Hungary of the time. Milanković continued to practice civil engineering in Vienna until the autumn of
1909, when he was offered the chair of applied mathematics (rational
mechanics, celestial mechanics,
theoretical physics) in Belgrade. The year
1909 marked a turning-point in his life. Although he continued to pursue his investigations of various problems pertaining to the applications of reinforced concrete, he decided to concentrate on fundamental research.
Life
Turbulent events took place as soon as he'd settled down in
Belgrade, when the
Balkan Wars were followed by
World War I. When the war broke out in
1914 (he was just-married), he was interned by the
Austro-Hungarian army in
Neusiedl am See and later in
Budapest, where he was allowed to work in the
library of the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences. As early as
1912, his interests turned to solar climates and temperatures prevailing on the planets. Throughout his internment in
Budapest he devoted his time to this field and, by the end of the war, he'd finished a monograph which was published in
1920, in the publications of the
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, by Gauthiers-Villards in
Paris, under the title
Théorie mathématique des phénomènes thermiques produits par la radiation solaire (Mathematical theory of thermal phenomena caused by solar radiation).
The results set forth in this work won him a considerable reputation in the scientific world, notably for his "curve of insolation at the Earth's surface". This solar curve wasn't really accepted until
1924, when the great meteorologist and climatologist
Wladimir Köppen with his son-in-law
Alfred Wegener, introduced the curve in their work, entitled
Climates of the geological past. After these first tributes, Milanković was invited, in
1927, to co-operate in two important publications: the first was a handbook on climatology (
Handbuch der Klimatologie) and the second a handbook on geophysics (Gutenberg's
Handbuch der Geophysik). The former, for which he wrote the introduction
Mathematische Klimalehre und astronomische Theorie der Klimaschwankungen (Mathematical science of climate and astronomical theory of the variations of the climate), was published in
1930 in German, and in
1939 was translated into Russian. In it the theory of planetary climate is further developed with special reference to the
Earth.
He created the leap year rule of the
Revised Julian calendar, in use by many orthodox churches, which is more accurate than the original
Julian calendar, but less accurate than the
Gregorian calendar on which it's based.
For the second textbook, Milanković wrote four sections developing and formulating his theory of the secular motion of the Earth's poles, and his theory of glacial periods (
Milankovitch cycles), which was built on earlier work by
James Croll. Milanković was able to improve upon Croll's work partly by the use of improved calculations of the earth's orbit then recently published by
Ludwig Pilgrim in
1904. Fully aware that his theory of solar radiation had been successfully completed, and that the papers dealing with this theory were dispersed in separate publications, he decided to collect and publish them under a single cover. Thus, in
1941, on the eve of war in his country, the printing of his great work
Kanon der Erdbestrahlung und seine Anwendung auf das Eiszeitenproblem (Canon of Insolation of the Earth and Its Application to the Problem of the Ice Ages) was completed, 626 pages in quarto, in German, issued in the publications of the
Royal Serbian Academy. This work was translated into English under the title
Canon of Insolation of the Ice-Age Problem, in
1969 by the Israel Program for Scientific Translations, published by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Science Foundation,
Washington, D.C..
Objections were raised in the
1950s against the Milanković theory of ice ages; these objections came mainly from meteorologists who claimed that the insolation changes due to the changes in the Earth's orbital elements were too small to significantly perturb the climate system. However, in the late
1960s and
1970s, investigation of the deep-sea sediments brought widespread acceptance of Milanković's view, since the periodicity discovered (100,000 years) matched so closely with the longest orbital period — see
Ice age for more discussion.
Other Work
In addition to his scientific work, Milanković always showed great interest in the historical development of science. He wrote a textbook on the history of astronomy, and two books on a popular level:
Through Space and Centuries fictionalized the development of astronomy while the other, entitled
Through the Realm of Science, dealt with the development of exact sciences.
Milanković also published a three volume autobiography in
Serbian,
Recollection, Experiences and Vision, which was never translated. For this reason his son, Vasko Milanković, has completed a biography:
My father, Milutin Milanković.
Milanković was elected a corresponding member of the
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in
1920, a full member in
1924, a corresponding member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts in
1925, and a member of the German Academy of Naturalists "Leopoldina" in Halle; he was also a member of many scientific societies and related organizations, both in
Yugoslavia and abroad.
Namings
Bibliography
Further Information
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