Academy Members

Bosanac Tomo, F.C.A.

Academic titles:

• Fellow of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts
• Doctor of Science

Institutions:

• full professor, retired – Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb
• corresponding member – Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts 04/21/1994 – 08/12/2003)

Membership in Academy:

• full member – Department of Technical Sciences (07/24/1991 – 08/12/2003)
• extraordinary member – Department of Technical Sciences (06/29/1960 – 07/24/1991)

Tomo Bosanac, F.C.A., was born in 1918 in Bjelovar where he went to high school and graduated in Zagreb in 1937. He graduated from the Faculty of Engineering, University of Zagreb in 1943, and received his PhD at the same faculty in 1955.

After graduation, he worked as an assistant at the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering. He continued his career in the Rade Končar factory as the chief constructor of electrical machines, and later as a director, he prepared the production of synchronous generators for which he worked out the entire theoretical basis and the necessary calculation. As a top expert in the field of electromagnetic field and circuit theory, he applied his knowledge for the design of particularly complex machines and devices that were first made in Croatia at that time. We should especially emphasize the construction of the first hydroelectric Power Plant Mariborski otok of 24 megavoltamperes, a hydrogenerator of 120 megavoltamperes for the Power Plant Split, the construction of a cyclotron at the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb.

In 1957 he was elected a professor in permanent employment at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Zagreb. He held this position until 1959 when he was appointed director of the Ruđer Bošković Institute. He returned to the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in 1965 as a full professor. During his thirty-six years at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, he taught several courses: Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering, Theoretical Electrical Engineering, Field Theory, Electromagnetic Field Theory, Circuit Theory, Energy Conversion and Network Stability. He was head of the Department of Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering and Electrotechnical Measurements from 1974 to 1982. He designed and built with a team of associates at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering several devices for high-frequency industrial heating.

He has written several professional and scientific papers, four scripts and two textbooks. Of note should be his life’s work, the monograph Theoretical Electrical Engineering, published in 1973.

For his work and merits, he received several awards and recognitions: the Award of the Government of the FNRJ in 1949, the Order of Labor of the Second Class, then the First Class, the Order of the Republic with a Silver Wreath, the Award of the Croatian Parliament, the Nikola Tesla Award, the City of Zagreb Award, the Golden Plaque Josip Lončar and the Golden Plaque of Narodna tehnika.

Professor Bosanac is responsible for the establishment and development of the scientific field of electrical engineering and electrical engineering industry in Croatia.