Croatia 1943 – Ruder Boskovic
Ruder (or Rudjer) Josip Boskovic
(1711–87) was a Croatian mathematician, astronomer and
physicist. He was born in Dubrovnik but spent most of his
working life in Italy; as a result he is also known by his
Italianized name of Ruggero Giuseppe Boscovich. He studied
light and optics and recommended the use of compound optics for
overcoming chromatic aberration in refractors. This stamp shows
him using a small telescope and clasping what may be intended
to be a globe of the Earth, as geodesy was another of his
interests. In the 1760s he helped found the Jesuit observatory
at Brera, near Milan. Boskovic devised the first method of
computing an object’s orbit from just three observations.
He was also a pioneer of the theory of atomic forces.
The 73rd stamp in each sheet of 100
contains a small addition: a letter “S” on
Boskovic’s right hand, being the intial of the
stamp’s engraver, Karl Seizinger (see detail at left).
