The House of Lavoslav Ružička

LRuzicka

The first Croatian Nobel-prize winner Lavoslav Ružička was born into a family of craftsmen in Vukovar on September 13th 1887. When he turned four, his family moved to Osijek where he completed his primary education and later classical high school. Next he enrolled in the programme of the Technical High School in Karlsruhe. In less than four years, in 1910, he had completed his studies in chemistry and written his doctoral thesis in the field of organic chemistry.

He was particularly interested in natural compounds, especially physiologically active and scented substances. In 1939 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. In 1940, Ružička was elected as an honorary member of the Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences and received an honorary doctorate at the Croatian University. The same year, he was also awarded the freedom of the town of Vukovar. Ružička and his associates published 580 scientific articles up to 1960.

He died at the age of 90 in Zürich, on September 26th 1976.