Mihailo Petrović Alas

Mihailo Petrović Alas was a Serbian mathematician, inventor and university professor, born in Belgrade in 1868. He studied in Belgrade and then at the Sorbonne, where he took a degree in mathematical sciences in 1891 and was a student of Henri Poincaré, Paul Painlevé, Charles Hermite and Émile Picard. He became a distinguished professor at Belgrade University, contributed significantly to the study of differential equations, and founded engineering mathematics in Serbia. He invented one of the first prototypes of a hydraulic analog computer. He was also a licensed fisherman by trade, which gave him the nickname Alas, meaning fisherman on the rivers.