Vojin Šulović
Academician Dr. Vojin Šulović was born on May 18, 1923, in Kuršumlija, where he completed primary school. He attended high school in Prokuplje, graduating in 1941. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade in 1951. As a medical student, he received three prestigious awards in competitions organized by the University of Belgrade for professional student papers in medicine. He specialized in gynecology and obstetrics and soon earned his doctorate in medical sciences with a dissertation entitled “Biological and Biochemical Aspects of the Placental Chorionic Gonadotropic Hormone.” He was appointed assistant lecturer at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1954, assistant professor in 1961, associate professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade in 1969, and full professor in 1976. From 1973 to 1985, he served as Director of the Gynecology and Obstetrics Clinic of the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade.
From 1985 to 1987, he was Vice-Rector of the University of Belgrade, responsible for scientific research and international relations. During the academic year 1958/59, he completed professional training at the Gynecology and Obstetrics Clinic of the Faculty of Medicine in Strasbourg, France, and in 1965/66 at the Gynecology and Obstetrics Clinic of the Institute for Human Reproduction at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. He also participated in all major international gynecological congresses around the world.
Professor Dr. Vojin Šulović became a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1978. He was a member of the Medical Academy of the Serbian Medical Society, the Association of French-speaking Gynecologists, the French Association for Perinatal Medicine, the World Association of Gynecologists and Obstetricians, and an honorary member of gynecological and obstetrical associations in Russia, France, Poland, the Poznań Voivodeship, the Romanian Medical Academy, the Society of Surgeons of Japan, and many others.
He was also an honorary member of almost all gynecology and obstetrics sections of medical societies in the former Yugoslavia, the Medical Society of Montenegro, and the Association for the Application of Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology. He served as president of the Yugoslav-American Science Scholarship Association (Fulbright Program) and was the first honorary president of Fulbright scholars for the former Yugoslavia.
He organized the Third Congress of the Serbian Medical Society and participated in organizing the commemoration of the first hospital on the territory of Serbia, established eight centuries earlier in the Studenica Monastery, as well as a scientific conference in Priština (1989) dedicated to medieval medicine in Serbia.
He took part in numerous Yugoslav and international gynecological congresses with professional and scientific presentations. These included congresses in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Skopje, Portorož, Sarajevo, Zagreb, and Ljubljana, as well as world congresses in Tokyo, New York, Moscow, Amsterdam, Paris, Prague, Vienna, London, Chicago, Rome, Washington, Barcelona, Venice, Singapore, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Berlin, and many other cities.
Academician Šulović taught medical sciences in postgraduate studies in Indonesia at universities and medical faculties in Jakarta (Java) and Medan (Sumatra), specializing in perinatal medicine. He also lectured in Athens, Greece, at the International Postgraduate School of Traditional Medicine on the topic “Traditional Medicine in Human Reproduction.”
He was the author or co-author of 705 published papers and 17 books and monographs published both in Serbia and abroad. He mentored more than one hundred master’s and doctoral theses at universities throughout the former Yugoslavia.
Professor Dr. Vojin Šulović received numerous domestic and international honors. Among his awards were the July 7th Award, the October Award of the City of Belgrade, the Order of Merit for the People with Silver Rays, the Order of Labor with Golden Wreath, the Order of Labor with Red Flag, the Medal of the Serbian Warrior, the Saint Sava Charter, and the highest recognition of the Toplica District.
The Bibliographic Institute in the United States selected Academician Vojin Šulović as Personality of the Year for his contribution to science and medicine in the field of gynecology and obstetrics, and included him among the thousand most distinguished individuals in the world in the book “GREAT MINDS OF THE 21st CENTURY.”
The International Biographical Centre in Cambridge, England, selected Academician Šulović as one of the personalities who marked the 20th century in medicine, alongside figures such as Einstein, Gandhi, Churchill, Twain, and Kennedy.
In addition to scientific research projects financed by the Serbian Ministry of Science through the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Academician Vojin Šulović was the principal investigator in three major research projects funded by scientific institutions in the United States:
- Fetal brain development (in cooperation with the Institute of Neurophysiology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA),
- Frequency of Rh isoimmunization after induced abortions (with Columbia University in New York), and
- Biological effects of ultrasound on the fetus (in cooperation with the United States Department of Health).
Academician Professor Dr. Vojin Šulović, who left a remarkable legacy in science, healthcare, and education throughout eight decades of his life, was appointed Director of Medical and Biomedical Sciences at the European Center for Peace and Development of the United Nations University.
In April 2007, in honor of the 80th anniversary of his birth and his fruitful career, the legacy collection of Academician Šulović was opened in the National Library in Kuršumlija, built on the site where his family home once stood. The house had been destroyed during the Allied bombing of Kuršumlija in 1944, when his mother Danica and sister Julijana were killed. On that occasion, the renowned physician of Kuršumlija, Toplica, Serbia, and the world, who dedicated more than five decades to the fight for healthy generations, emphasized that although he had received many honors throughout his life, this one was dearest to him because it came from his hometown, the town of his youth, where his roots and the graves of his ancestors remained.
Academician Professor Dr. Vojin Šulović tragically lost his life in 2008 in a traffic accident in Belgrade, on the road to Lipovačka Forest, where he had lived during his final years.
He was buried in Belgrade, in the Alley of Distinguished Citizens.