Vladimir Devidé

Vladimir Devidé (1925 to 2010) was a Croatian mathematician, Japanologist, academic and writer, and a prominent promoter of Japanese culture in Croatia. Born in Zagreb, he finished the Zagreb gymnasium in 1944, graduated in civil engineering in 1951 and defended his doctoral thesis, A Class of Groupoids, at the University of Zagreb in 1956. He taught at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and from 1960 became a professor of mathematics at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture in Zagreb, where he stayed until retiring in 1990. He became a corresponding member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1973 and a full member of the Croatian Academy in 1990. His mathematical books include Matematička logika in 1964, Zadaci iz apstraktne algebre in 1971 and Matematika kroz kulture i epohe in 1979. He also wrote widely on Japan and haiku, and received the 2003 Croatian state lifetime achievement award in natural sciences for mathematics.