Academy Members

Matković Vladimir, F.C.A.

Academic titles:

• Fellow of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts
• Professor emeritus
• Doctor of science

Institutions:

• full professor, retired – Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb
• Professor emeritus – University of Zagreb

Membership in Academy:

• full member – Department of Technical Sciences (07/24/1991 – 04/13/2005)
• extraordinary member – Department of Mathematical, Physical and Chemical Sciences (06/23/1966 – 07/24/1991)

Curriculum Vitae

Vladimir Matković, F.C.A. was born on October 28, 1915, in Belišće and died on April 13, 2005, in Zagreb. He attended high school in Osijek and graduated in 1933. He attended the Military Academy from 1934 to 1937 in Belgrade and graduated as an engineering second lieutenant. He studied at the technical faculties in Belgrade and Zagreb, and graduated in 1943 from the Faculty of Engineering, University of Zagreb.

After graduation, as an engineer, and since 1950 as chief engineer in the then Directorate of Post, Telegraph and Telephone in Zagreb, he noticed development problems in the field of telecommunications, and early acquaintance with Shannon’s fundamental work Mathematical Theory of Communication encouraged him to systematically research information theory.

He came to the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Zagreb in 1947, first as a part-time teacher, and in 1951 he was elected assistant professor. He received his PhD in 1958 from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering (now the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb). In his dissertation entitled Application of communication theory to determining the entropy of the Croatian language, he conducted the first research of the information features of the Croatian language, experimentally determined its entropy and derived the optimal code. He was elected associate professor in 1959 and full professor in 1962.

He began working with the Academy in the early 1960s. Co-authored with Academician Vladimir Vranić, he wrote Mathematical theory of the syllabic structure of Croato-serbian and Contribution to a statistical theory of Croato-serbian, which he published in the Academy’s journal. His scientific interests in the 1970s and 1980s were information networks, integrated communication networks and general problems of transport and transport.

In 1951, he founded the Bureau of Telecommunications and was its head for sixteen years. He was the first to introduce the scientific disciplines Information Theory and Logical Algebra into teaching, and on these grounds developed the study course Telecommunications and Informatics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing. He wrote several teaching materials, among which the 1984 textbook Theory of Information stands out. He is credited with the fact that telecommunications in Croatia have a long and rich tradition in science and education, as well as in production and application.

In 1966 he was elected an associate member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts, in 1991 as a full member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in the Department of Mathematical, Physical, Chemical and Technical Sciences, of which he was secretary in the period 1987-1991.

After the establishment of the independent Republic of Croatia, he proposed and led the scientific conference Telecommunications in Croatia, organized by the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, which was held in June 1992 under the auspices of the Government of the Republic of Croatia. The meeting concluded with recommendations for the further development of telecommunications in Croatia.

In 1997, Vladimir Matković moved to the newly established Department of Technical Sciences and continued to act as the editor-in-chief of the journal Rad of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts – Technical Sciences.