Andrija Mohorovičić

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Andrija Mohorovičić
Portrait of Andrija Mohorovičić
Born23 January 1857
Opatija, Austrian Littoral, Austrian Empire
Died18 December 1936(1936-12-18) (aged 79)
Zagreb, Sava Banovina, Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Known forEponym for the Mohorovičić discontinuity

Andrija Mohorovičić (23 January 1857 – 18 December 1936) was a Croatian[1] geophysicist. He is best known for the eponymous Mohorovičić discontinuity and is considered one of the founders of modern seismology.[2][3]

Early years

The house in Volosko where Mohorovičić was born

Mohorovičić was born in

Prague in 1875, where one of his professors was Ernst Mach. At 15, Mohorovičić knew Italian, English and French. Later he learned German, Latin, and Ancient Greek.[4]

Mohorovičić c. 1880
Detail of a commemorative plaque of Mohorovičić in Clementinum, Prague, Czech Republic
Mohorovičić on a 1963 Yugoslavian stamp

Career in education

He taught first at high school in

Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb, where he was a private docent. In 1910 he became a titular associate university professor.[4]

Meteorology

In Bakar he was first exposed to

Grič and established a service for all Croatia, while teaching geophysics and astronomy at the university.[4][5]

On 13 March 1892, he observed the tornado in Novska, which picked up a 13-ton railway carriage with fifty passengers and threw it 30 m. He observed also the "vihor" (whirlwind) near Čazma in 1898 and studied the climate in Zagreb. Mohorovičić was the first person to describe atmospheric rotors with a horizontal axis, which he observed during bora-wind episodes in the northern Adriatic.[6] In his last paper on meteorology (1901), he discussed the decrease in atmospheric temperature with height. His observations of clouds formed the basis of his doctoral thesis On the Observation of Clouds, the Daily and Annual Cloud Period in Bakar presented to the University of Zagreb and which earned him his degree as doctor of philosophy in 1893.[4][5]

Seismology

On 8 October 1909 there was an earthquake with its

tectonic plates
. Subsequent study of the
Earth's interior
confirmed the existence of the discontinuity under all continents and oceans.

Mohorovičić assumed that the velocity of seismic waves increases with the depth. The function he proposed to calculate the velocity of seismic waves is called the Mohorovičić law.

seismograph for recording the ground horizontal movement, but due to lack of funds the project was never realized.[13]

As early as 1909 Mohorovičić started giving lectures that both architects and building contractors should follow, ahead of his time setting some of the basic principles of

geoscience
.

Legacy

The

8422 Mohorovičıć
.

Works

See also

References

  1. ^ krispiessens (29 January 2021). "Croatian earthquakes – Discovery of the Mohorovičić (Moho) discontinuity". GeoERA. Retrieved 4 November 2022.
  2. ^ "Andrya (Andrija) Mohorovicic". Penn State. Archived from the original on 26 June 2013. Retrieved 30 January 2021.
  3. ^ "Mohorovičić, Andrija". Encyclopedia.com. Archived from the original on 1 February 2021. Retrieved 30 January 2021.
  4. ^ a b c d e "Andrija Mohorovičić (1857–1936)—On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birth". seismosoc.org/. Seismological Research Letters. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  5. ^ a b Orlić, Mirko (December 2007). "Andrija Mohorovičić as a meteorologist". Geofizika. 24 (2): 75–91. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  6. doi:10.1175/BAMS-88-5-693
    .
  7. ^ Mohorovičić, A. (1910). "Das Beben vom 8. X. 1909" [The quake of 8 October 1909]. Godišnje izvješće Zagrebačkog meteorološkog opservatorija za godinu 1909 / Jahrbuch des meteorologischen Observatoriums in Zagreb (Agram) für das Jahr 1909 [Yearbook of the meteorological observatory in Zagreb (Agram) for the year 1909] (in German): 1–63. Mohorovičić had observed (p.28) that quakes seemed to generate two types of preliminary tremors (i.e., the earliest recorded tremors from a quake): one type was detected only by stations that were up to 300 km from the epicenter and other type was detected only by stations that were 700 km from the epicenter. After calculating the waves' transit times, Mohorovičić concluded (p. 38) that waves from earthquakes were being reflected by a discontinuity which was located approximately 50 km below the Earth's surface: "Ich entschied mich für eine abgerundete Tiefe von 50 km." (I decided on a rounded-off depth of 50 km.)
  8. ISBN 9780521283892
    .
  9. ^ "Discontinuity". gfz.hr. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  10. ^ A. Mohorovičić (1916). "Die Bestimmung des Epizentrums eines Nahbebens". Gerlands Beiträge zur Geophysik. Vol. 14. pp. 199–205.
  11. ^ A. Mohorovičić (1914). "Hodograph der normalen P-Wellen fur eine mittlere Herdtiefe". Beilage zu den Seismischen Aufzeichnungen. Kr. Zem. Zavod Za Meteorologiju I Geodinamiku, Zagreb.
  12. ^ A. Mohorovičić (1914). "Hodograph der ersten longitudinalen Wellen eines Bebens (emersio undarum primarum)". Bulletin des travaux de 1'Académie Yougoslave des Sciences et des Beaux-arts, Classe des sciences mathématiques et naturelles. Vol. 2. pp. 139–157.
  13. ^ A. Mohorovičić (1917). "Principles and construction of a seismograph, and a proposal for construction of a new seismograph for recording of horizontal component of ground motion (Principi konstrukcije sismografa i prijedlog za konstrukciju nova sismografa za horizontalne komponente gibanja zemlje)". Rad JAZU. Vol. 217. pp. 114–150.
  14. ^ A. Mohorovičić (1911). "The effects of earthquakes on buildings (Djelovanje potresa na zgrade)". Vijesti HRV. Društva in. I arh.

External links

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