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Front: Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), Serbian-American inventor and researcher

Tesla was born in Croatia of Serbian origin. He attended the Technical University at Graz, Austria, and the University of Prague, majoring in engineering. It was in Graz he discovered the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery.

He emigrated to the United States in 1884 and sold the patent rights to his system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors to George Westinghouse the following year. In 1891 he invented the Tesla coil, an induction coil widely used in radio technology.

Back: High frequency transformer

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Front: Ivo Andric (1892-1975), Serbian-Croatian novelist

Andric was born in Bosnia, then part of Austria-Hungary and today part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was raised by his aunt and uncle in a Bosnian town on the Drina River. There he saw the Ottoman Bridge, later made famous in his novel The Bridge on the Drina.

Andric studied at universities in Zagreb, Vienna, Krakow and Graz. The Austrian government imprisoned him during World War I for his political activities.

Andric became a civil servant under the newly formed Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). He served in the Ministry of Faiths, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as Deputy Foreign Minister and later Ambassador to Germany. His ambassadorship ended in 1941 after Germany invaded Yugoslavia. During World War II, Andric lived quietly in Belgrade, completing three of his most famous novels in 1945, including The Bridge on the Drina.

After the war, Andric held a number of ceremonial posts in the new Communist government of Yugoslavia. In 1961, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Back: Multiple arch stone bridge on the Drina River at Visegrad

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