Fran Bošnjaković

Who was Fran Bošnjaković?

Fran Bošnjaković was a noted Croatian engineer.

Bošnjaković was born in Zagreb, where he was initially educated. He continued his education at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden, Germany. He obtained there a doctoral degree in engineering in 1928, and in 1931 he became a Privatdozent at the same Technical University.

When Hitler came into power, his further career in Germany was blocked, and he accepted in 1934 the position of an associate professor at the University of Belgrade. He moved back to the University of Zagreb as full professor in 1936. After 1945, during the Yugoslav communist regime, he was degraded to two years of forced labor. In 1951, he became rector of the University of Zagreb in Croatia, then part of Yugoslavia. However, continuing political disagreement with the communist régime in Yugoslavia made him decide to accept one of the research offers in post-war Germany.

In 1953, he started lecturing at the Technische Hochschule in Braunschweig in Germany, becoming the head of the Department for thermodynamics and director of the Thermotechnical institute. In 1961, he founded the Institute of Thermodynamics for Aeronautics and Astronautics at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, which he led until his retirement in 1968. After retirement, he spent several years as visiting professor at leading American universities.