Review article

Nobel Prize winner Vladimir Prelog as a scholarship recipient of Croatian Cultural Society Napredak

Nenad Raos *

* Corresponding author.

Abstract

The third Croatian Nobel Prize laureate (1975,
for Chemistry), Vladimir Prelog (1906–1998), was
– much like the second laureate Ivo Andrić (1961,
for Literature) – a scholar of the Hrvatsko Kulturno
Društvo Napredak (HKD Napredak/Croatian Cultural
Society “Progress”), founded in 1905. This paper
presents the history of HKD Napredak and the
biography of Vladimir Prelog, with an emphasis on
his childhood in Sarajevo and his studies of chemistry
in Prague. It demonstrates that the Napredak
scholarship was an important, but not a crucial
factor in Prelog’s career, as Prelog largely depended
on the financial support of his father, Milan Prelog
(1879–1931), a professor of general history at the
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb.

Keywords

Vladimir Prelog; history of chemistry; HKD Napredak; Ivo Andrić; Milan Prelog; Leopold Ružička

Hrčak ID:

351407

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/351407

Publication date:

14.7.2026.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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