Vladimir Jakšić
Vladimir Jakšić was a Serbian economist, statistician and meteorologist. He is the founder of the first meteorological station network and the first weather statistics department in Serbia.Biography
He was the son of treasurer Jakov Jakšić who worked in the State Office of Prince Miloš Obrenović. Vladimir Jakšić was educated at the Gymnasium of Belgrade, and then enrolled at the Faculty of Economics and Finance at the University of Vienna, before studying state-legal sciences at Eberhard Karls University of Tubingen and the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg.
Since 1847 he worked at the Ministry of Finance, where he collected statistical weather data on his own initiative. Jakšić made his first instrumental meteorological measurements in 1848 at his estate in Topčidersko Brdo. He never stopped working for the next half-century.As early as 1850 he submitted a proposal to the Državni savet for the creation of a state statistical service, but nothing came off it yet. In 1852 he was appointed professor of National Economy and Finance at the Belgrade Lyceum in Belgrade.
He was a recipient of many awards, most notably the Austro-Hungarian Order of Franz Joseph, the Romanian Order of the Crown, the Greek Order of the Redeemer, the Russian Order of Saint Anne, the Russian Order of Saint Stanislaus, the Serbian Order of the White Eagle and the Serbian Order of the Cross of Takovo.
