Stankovic, Siniša.

Born Mar. 26, 1892, in Zajecar; died Feb. 24, 1974, in Belgrade. Yugoslav biologist, biogeographer, teacher, and public and political figure. Member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Stankovič became a professor of zoology at the University of Belgrade in 1924. He was an active participant in the popular liberation struggle during the fascist occupation of Yugoslavia. From 1944 to 1953 he was president of the Presidium of the People’s Assembly of Serbia (before August 1945, the Antifascist Assembly of the National Liberation of Serbia). Stankovic was the first chairman of the Academic Council of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In 1947 he founded and became director of the Institute of Ecology and Biogeography in Belgrade.

Stankovič was a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts. He researched the ecology and geographical distribution of the inhabitants of inland waters. He made a thorough study of the life of Lake Ohrid. In 1959 he translated V. I. Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Stankovic was a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1966).