Josif Pančić

Josip Pančić was born in Ugrini, near Crikvenica, on the Military Frontier, a territory in the Habsburg monarchy. At the time of his birth the region was part of the French Empire. Pančić was the fourth son of Pavel Pančić and his wife Margarita. His paternal grandfather, who came from the area around Niš, had served in a volunteer battalion of the Austrian Imperial Army during the Austro-Turkish War.[4] According to tradition, the Pančić family hailed from Herzegovina and settled in Ugrini in olden times.[5]

After finishing elementary school in Gospić, he went on to the lyceum in Rijeka, and then continued classes in the Regia Academica Scientiarum in Zagreb (1830). He graduated in 1842 in Budapest in medicine. In addition to other courses, Pančić attended botany courses, taught by the then renowned botany professor, Joseph Sadler (Sadler József).[6] Later, recalling those early lectures, he wrote:[3]

"And since the first course in botany I started to love botany and decided to become a botanist, so I started to botanize excitedly and to collect plants around Pest and Buda,..."

While studying about botany at the Natural History Museum in Vienna, Pančić became acquainted with the Serbian linguist Vuk Stefanović Karadžić who wrote him a letter of recommendation to the Serbian authorities, in order to fulfill his wish to settle in the Principality of Serbia to study Nature.[7] In May 1846 he arrived in Serbia where for the first seven years he worked as a physician in rural area. In 1847 he asked to be released from his Austrian citizenship and applied for Serbian citizenship, the same year he met his future wife Lyudmila Mileva.[8]

In 1853, he moved from Kragujevac to Belgrade when he was first appointed adjunct professor at Belgrade Lyceum's Department of Natural History and Agronomy by decree of Prince Alexander Karadjordjević, before becoming a full-time professor of Natural History and Agriculture in 1854, as decreed by the Ministry of Education of the Principality of Serbia.[9]

As Professor of Natural Sciences, he as one of the six original professors (along with Konstantin Branković, Jovan Sterija Popović, Đura Daničić, Matija Ban, and Dimitrije Nešić), of the Lyceum of the Principality of Serbia.[10]

He later became rector of the Great School (the future University of Belgrade) and the founder of the Institutes of Mineralogy and Geology, Zoologial and Botanical Departments and of the experimental botanical gardens in Belgrade.[9]

Pančić extensively documented the flora of Serbia and is credited with having classified many species of plants that were unknown to the botanical community at the time. He discovered a total of 47 valid species new to science.[11] The crowning achievement of Pančić floristic studies was the "Flora of the Principality of Serbia" (Flora Kneževine Srbije) published in 1874, while a supplement was added ten years later. His explorations marked the golden age of Serbia's botany.[11]

His most significant discovery was the Serbian Spruce,[12] which he discovered near Zaovine on the Tara Mountain in 1875. He firmly established Serbian botany among European sciences. He ascertained that Serbia's flora was rich and worthy of further studies.[11] During the Serbian–Ottoman War (1876–78), he was the Chief Physician of the Belgrade Hospital.

He is said to have "fallen in love" with Kopaonik, which he visited 16 times between 1851 and 1886.[13] Pančić was named the first president of the Serbian Royal Academy formed on April 5, 1887. He requested the opening of the Botanical garden "Jevremovac" in Belgrade.[14] Pančić died on 25 February 1888, his last wish was to be buried in the Kopaonik Mountain.[15]