Ruggero
Giuseppe Boscovich is not
(and
never was) a Croatian scientist
I
sympathize with small nations, really, I belong to one of them, in
their effort to wave banners with names of their countrymen to whom
the mankind is indebted to for their achievements. However, there
should be some decency, if not objectivity, in recognizing where and
how the achieve-ments are done. Take, for instance, the case of the
famous 18th century scientist and philosopher Roger
Boskovich. He was born in 1711 in the city-state Republic of
Ragusa (now Dubrovnik, Croatia) and because of that Croats claim
that Boscovich is "the greatest and most famous Croatian
philosopher and scientist Ruđer Bošković". Well,
Roger got only elementary education in his native city and in 1725,
age 14, moved to Italy where he spent most of his life, finished
higher education, taught at the Roman College for 20 years, and did
most of his professional work. He also lived and worked in France
for nine years and in England for seven months. He used Italian
language in private purposes, visited his hometown Ragusa only once,
in 1747, and died in 1787 in Milan, Italy. So, from the professional
point of view, if you want to attach a nationality to
"scientist Boscovich", only "Italian scientist"
is justified. French could probably claim it also, Boscovich was
naturalized, but they don’t do that, they are not a small nation.
Now,
if you are one of those who claim that title "Croatian
scientist" could be attached to every scientist who is Croat by
birth, it gets cloudy in Roger Boscovich case. His mother Paola
Bettera was a member of an Italian merchant family established in
Ragusa by Pietro Bettera from Bergamo in northern Italy. His father
Nikola Bošković was a merchant from Orahov Do in what was then
the Ottoman Empire and is now Bosnia and Herzegovina; it is likely
that Bošković’s family origins were in Montenegro. The
modern concept of nationality, based on ethnic concepts as language,
culture, |

religion,
custom, etc., was developed only in the 19th centu-
ry.
For this reason the attribution of a definite
"nationality" to personalities of the previous centuries,
living in ethnically mixed regions, is often indeterminable. There
is a record of Boscovich calling himself a Dalmatian from Ragusa.
Why can’t you say "famous European scientist and philosopher
of Dalmatian origin"? |