Ivan Đaja

Ivan Đaja (, ; 21 July 1884 – 1 October 1957) was a Serbian biologist, physiologist, author, and philosopher.

He was founder of the Chair for physiology at the Serbian Institute for Physiology, rector of the University of Belgrade, and member of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts. Đaja was a popularizer of biology, performed research in the role of the adrenal glands in thermoregulation, as well as pioneering work in hypothermia.

He has been described as the "restless researcher of the secret of life", who left a valuable creative and human mark in Serbian society, which was mostly pushed aside in the previous decades.

Early life

Đaja was born on 21 July 1884 in Le Havre, a major port in Normandy, France. His mother, Delphine Depois-Auger (1861, Ontere-1902, Belgrade), was French. She was a daughter of the local ship-owner. His father Božidar “Boža” Đaja (1850, Dubrovnik-1914, Hinterbrühl) was a ship master, originally working as a sea captain, later switching to river transportation. Ivan was their eldest child. While they were still living in France, the couple had another son, Aleksandar (1885–1968), who later became an agronomist within the Food Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Education

Đaja finished elementary and high school in Belgrade. After graduating at First Belgrade Gymnasium in 1902, he moved back to France, spending one year as a student at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille at Rouen. There, that same year, he founded the first chair for physiology in this part of the world, within the Institute for Physiology which he also founded and chaired for 40 years. Within the academy, he was member of academy of natural sciences and its secretary from 7 March 1937 to 7 March 1939. He gave his inaugural academic address on 6 March 1932, titled Some features of the fight against cold. After reorganization of the academy in 1947, Đaja was elected a member of department for mathematics and natural sciences and department for medical sciences on 22 March 1948. He became secretary of the former from that date to 10 June 1952, while he was entrusted with developing the latter and creating a new department for arts and music (he himself played a flute. He became member of that department, too, on 20 April 1949. In the process of reorganization, Serbian Royal Academy was renamed Serbian Academy of Science in 1947. Đaja later proposed for the name to be expanded by adding arts in the title, which was accepted after his death, in 1960, when the academy was officially renamed to Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Soon after becoming an associated member of the Serbian academy, he was elected to the same position in Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb. He helmed the process of collaboration between the two academies in an effort to realize his idea of creating a biology station for students located on the Adriatic Sea. As a result, Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries was founded in 1930 in Split, on the Dalmatian coast (today in Croatia). He was elected for his “seminal work on the behaviour of deep cooled warm blooded animals” and took over the academy seat which was left vacant after the death of Alexander Fleming. He was the one who invited Ivan's father Božidar to Belgrade, to helm the "Deligrad" ship.

Critics say that "true word about Đaja, as a writer, still hasn't been said". Starting with his first non-scientific works published in the Srđ magazine, he was described as a natural born storyteller. His meditative prose is said to have a "specific place" in Serbian literature. He was also writing down his thoughts in the form of saying and proverbs. and the way he brought organisms to hypothermia (reducing the body temperature by asphyxia and cold environment and then complete recovery by warming up the organism) is named Đaja’s method of induced hypothermia (“hypercapnian hypothermia”). Celebrating 100 years of the Institute for Physiology, a commemorative plaque was placed in the street on 10 September 2010.

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