Nikola Hajdin (Vrbovsko, April 4, 1923 – Belgrade, July 17, 2019) was a Jewish-Serbian Doctor of Civil Engineering and President of SANU from 2003 to 2015.

 

He was a professor at the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Belgrade. He graduated from the same faculty in 1951 and received his doctorate in 1956. He was elected a research associate at the Faculty of Civil Engineering in 1958, an assistant professor in 1960, an associate professor in 1961, and a full professor in 1966.

He was elected a corresponding member of SANU in 1970, and a full member in 1976. He was the vice-president of SANU from 1994 to 2003, and president of SANU from 2003 to 2015.

 

He was a (foreign) member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the European Academy of Sciences, Arts and Literature based in Paris, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts based in Salzburg. In 2000, he was elected an honorary doctor of the National Technical University of Athens.

He proposed (1954) and developed a method for numerically solving the boundary value problems of the Theory of Elasticity. The method proved to be suitable both in the Theory of Linear Beams and in the Theory of Surface Beams.

The method has found wide application in various branches of technology, especially in civil engineering, later in hydraulic engineering, in the analysis of traffic vehicles, sound analysis and in some other problems of a similar mathematical nature. He has been quoted and used in the works of foreign authors, and in England also in several master's and doctoral dissertations.

​N. Hajdin's scientific opus comprises about 200 papers, of which approximately half have been published abroad in the most prestigious journals or at important scientific conferences.

 

He has participated in the work of several different scientific committees of international symposia and conferences.

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As a professor in special scientific fields, N. Hajdin gave several lectures and held courses at postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Mathematics and Science in Belgrade, at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering in Skopje, the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Zagreb and the Faculty of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy in Ljubljana. He cooperated with the Society of Civil Engineers of Slovenia and the SAZU (Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts).

Some of the recognitions and awards worth mentioning are the following:

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- October Award of Belgrade for 1959,

- October Award of Novi Sad for 1981,

- AVNOJ Award for 1987,

- several awards in anonymous competitions for bridges in Yugoslavia, as well as an award in an anonymous competition for a bridge over the Vistula River in Poland.