History

The activity of the former Yugoslav Centre of Crystallography in the territory of the Republic of Serbia was further continued through the work of the Serbian Crystallographic Society (SCS). The founding assembly of SCS was held on May 7th, 1992 at the Faculty of Mining and Geology, University of Belgrade. The first elected president was Bela Ribar, vice-president Ilija Krstanović and secretary Ljiljana Karanović. The other members of first SCS committee were: Bogdan Prelesnik, Slobodanka Stanković, Svetislav Janjić and Dobrica Stojanović.

The First Conference of the SCS was held in Belgrade in 1992. In the next year, at the 16th General Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) in Beijing, China, SCS was accepted as a member of the IUCr. Between II and III Conference SCS become a member of the European Crystallographic Association (ECA). Slobodanka Stanković, president of SCA in the period from 1995 to 2004, attended as a SCS delegate to the Congress in China and the ECA session in Dresden in Germany.

In the same time Dejan Poleti was collected and sent information about all members of the SCS for the IX edition of the World Directory of Crystallographers. There were 34 members in 1993.

SCS organizes annual Conferences and invites crystallographers from abroad as plenary lecturers. The conference was attended by young crystallographers from the country and from abroad, which is important for the development of crystallography in Serbia. So far, a total of 21 conferences were held, where it was announced 65 invited lectures, 426 oral presentations and 134 posters. Conferences of SCS were organized and held in cities: I/1992 Beograd, II/1993 Beograd, III/1994 Novi Sad, IV/1995 Vrnjačka Banja, V/1996 Palić, VI/1997 Sokobanja, VII/1998 Vrnjačka Banja, VIII/2000 Kragujevac, IX/2001 Novi Sad, X/2002 Sokobanja, XI/2003 Oplenac, XII/2004 Kragujevac, XIII/2006 Novi Sad, XIV/2007 Vršac, XV/2008 D. Milanovac, XVI/2009 Divčibare, XVII/2010 Ivanjica, XVIII/2011 Andrevlje, XIX/2012 Bela Crkva, XX/2013 Avala, XXI/2014 Užice. Before the Conference, abstracts are printed in Serbian and English. SCS receives financial aid for membership payments and conference organization from the competent Ministry of the Republic of Serbia as the Adhering Body.

Nowadays, within the SCS, several groups of crystallographers at universities (Belgrade, Novi Sad, Kragujevac) and at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences „Vinča” in several independent laboratories for crystallography exist. In addition to mineralogy, crystallographic research groups in chemistry, physics and materials science were grown. The short information about activities of crystallographic community in Serbia entitled „Crystallography in Serbia” was published in IUCr Newsletter, (IUCr Newsletter 2011, Vol. 19, p. 17) as a part of presentation of Crystallography in south-eastern Europe. The brief history and the current state of crystallography in Serbia were outlined in „Crystallography in Serbia” (XXI Conference of the SCS, Užice, 12. 6 – 14. 6. 2014, Abstracts, p. 2-14) written on the occasion of declaring by the General Assembly of the United Nations the Year 2014 as the International Year of Crystallography.