Branimir Miletić, PhD Passed Away
A retired RBI scientist Branimir Miletić, PhD, passed away on 5 January 2010. He arrived at the Ruđer Bošković Institute on the invitation of Academician Ivan Supek in 1957 where he founded the Laboratory of Cellular Radiobiology and started the first molecular genetic research in Croatia. He is considered the founder of molecular biology in Croatia.
Dr. Miletić investigated the effects of radiation on nucleic acids in modal organism of bacteria Escherichia coli. He recognized that the right question of radiobiology is not what all the damage radiation can cause to living cells, but which damages are important, and which are trivial. He was also aware of the fact that the nucleic acid molecules of heritage and genes are made of DNA and in this theory he was a leader not only in Croatian, but in European scientific community as well.
Dr. Miletić was born on 27 November 1918 in Zadar. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade in 1949, and got his PhD in 1955 at the Radium Institute (Institut du Radium) in Paris. From 1965 until 1966 he was a visiting professor at the University of Saint Louis in the USA. Since 1970s he had devoted his work to theoretical research in the field of molecular biology, evolution and philosophy of science.
In 1975 he was appointed as an honorary advisor at the RBI. In 1992 he received the State Award for a Lifetime Achievement, and in 1999, the Croatian President Franjo Tuđman awarded him with the Order of Danica Hrvatska with the figure of Ruđer Bošković. He is the author of more than 50 scientific papers which have been cited 162 times.