Slovenian engineers who contributed to humanity
Jurij Vega (1754-1802)
Baron Jurij Vega was a Slovene mathematician, physicist and artillery officer. Vega published a series of books of logarithm tables. The first one appeared in 1783. In 1797, it was followed by a second volume that contained a collection of integrals and other useful formulae. His Handbook, which was originally published in 1793, was later translated into several languages and appeared in over 100 issues.
Joseph Ressel (1793-1857)
Joseph Ludwig Franz Ressel was a forester and inventor of Czech-German descent, who designed one of the first working ship’s propellers. He worked for the Austrian government as a forester in the more southern parts of the monarchy, today Slovenia and Croatia. He died in Laibach (now Ljubljana) and was buried there in St. Christopher’s Cemetery. A monument to him in Vienna commemorates him as the one and only inventor of the screw propeller and steam shipping.
Jožef Stefan (1835-1893)
Jožef (Josef) Stefan was a Slovene physicist and mathematician of the Austrian Empire. Stefan taught physics at the University of Vienna, was Director of the Physical Institute, Vice-President of the Vienna Academy of Sciences, and member of several scientific institutions in Europe. He is best known for originating Stefan’s law, stating that the total radiation from a black body is proportional to the fourth power of its thermodynamic temperature.
Janez Puh (1862-1914)
Janez Puh (Johann Puch) was a Slovene inventor and mechanic who went on to become the founder of the Austrian Puch automobile plants, then one of the most significant vehicle producers in Europe.
Friderik Pregl (1869-1930)
Friderik (Fritz) Pregl was a Slovenian and Austrian chemist and physician from a mixed Slovene-German-speaking background. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1923 for making important contributions to quantitative organic microanalysis, one of which was the improvement of the combustion traintechnique for elemental analysis
Jože Plečnik (1872-1957)
Jože Plečnik was a Slovene architect who had a major impact on the modern architecture of Vienna, Prague and of Ljubljana, most notably by designing the iconic Triple Bridge and the Slovene National and University Library building, as well as the embankments along the Ljubljanica River, the Ljubljana Central Market buildings, etc.
Milan Vidmar (1885-1962)
Milan Vidmar was a Slovene electrical engineer, chess player, chess theorist, and writer. He was among the top dozen chess players in the world from 1910 to 1930 and in 1950, was among the inaugural recipients of the title International Grandmaster from FIDE.
