Remembrance – prof. Dr. Lazar Stojković, first director of the Institute and rector of UNS

It has been 60 years since the founding of the University of Novi Sad. It was a historical act, necessary and well deserved. The development of Vojvodina Province, and the whole Serbia, essentially depended on science and higher education, and one university in Belgrade was not enough to fulfill that condition.

The exceptional contribution of the University of Belgrade is reflected in the fact that the faculties of the future University of Novi Sad were established as parts of the University of Belgrade. The Faculties of Agriculture and Philosophy were founded in 1954, the Faculties of Law and Technology in 1959, the Faculties of Medicine and Mechanical Engineering and the Faculty of Economics in Subotica in 1960.

Academics Milutin Milanković and Aleksandar Belić gave the first lectures to students of two newly established Novi Sad faculties, and the credit for a good start and the basis for future progress of the University of Novi Sad went to Professor Lazar Stojković, the first rector of the University of Novi Sad (1960-1963).

Prof. Dr. Lazar Stojković, full professor, was born in Novi Sad in 1904. He graduated in 1928 from the Agricultural College in Vienna. He worked as an assistant at the Selection Station of the Faculty of Agriculture in Zemun, where he was engaged from 1934, and as an assistant breeder-agrotechnician at the Agricultural Experimental and Control Station in Topčider until 1938.

Then he moved to the newly established Agricultural Experimental and Control Station in Novi Sad, today’s Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, National Institute of the Republic of Serbia, where he worked until the beginning of World War II as head of the Department of Plant Production and Breeding. After World War II, he was the first manager of the Station and the first director of the Provincial Institute for Agricultural Research in Novi Sad (1944-1954). He was elected full professor of General Farming and Agroecology at the Faculty of Agriculture in Novi Sad in 1954. He was the first dean of the Faculty of Agriculture (1954-1958) and the first rector of the University of Novi Sad in two election terms (1960-1965). He retired in 1974, and in the same year he was elected the first honorary doctor of science of the University of Novi Sad. Independently or as the first author, he published 80 scientific and professional papers and several books. He is one of the creators of nine varieties of wheat, corn, barley, oats and vetch. He won a number of awards and recognitions.

Prof. Dr. Lazar Stojković confirmed his benevolent nature and patriotism by bequeathing all his inherited and work acquired assets to Matica Srpska and the Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops in Novi Sad. Today, the Fund of Lazar and Saveta Stojković at Matica Srpska are awarding young researchers for outstanding results in the field of agroecology.