Minerals from Macedonia. XXVIII. A tribute to academician Gligor Jovanovski

Abstract

<jats:p><p>It is both rewarding and difficult to write a review article about the contributions of acade­mician Gligor Jovanovski to the study of minerals from Macedonia.</p><p>It is rewarding because these contributions are exceptional scientifically and, in addition, serve as a clear sign for the existence of a country named, despite denials from some quarters, Macedonia or, more fully, Republic of Macedonia.</p><p>On the other hand, it is difficult to briefly summarize the content of over 50 scientific papers, published mainly in distinguished international journals and cited many, many times in the scientific literature.</p><p>Since this review article is published in the present special issue dedicated to academician Gligor Jovanovski, accepting the challenge I now try my best to give the reader a fair presentation of the content of the papers on minerals from Macedonia and a deserved tribute to their author.</p><p>It should be noted that the work on the minerals from Macedonia does not cover all research interests of academician Jovanovski and that the reviewed papers deal with studies in several scientific fields. The early papers dedicated to the study of minerals from Macedonia are spectroscopic in nature (at first by conventional infrared spectroscopy and later enriched by the use of Raman and FT IR spectroscopy). Such a state of matters is a natural consequence of the availability of spectroscopic equipment, on the one hand, and the active spectroscopic work at the Institute of Chemistry of the Faculty of Science, on the other. Needless to say, a number of co-workers from the Institute of chemistry actively participated throughout in the studies by academician Jovanovski as may be seen in the list of references given below. </p><p>Without having X-ray diffraction instrumentation on hands, Jovanovski devoted a respectable portion of his research of minerals to crystallographic (X-ray) studies. Clearly, such studies would not have been possible without the open-handed cooperation of researchers from Zagreb and Uppsala and the perseverance of Jovanovski himself. </p>As the instrumental basis of the Institute of Chemistry grew and diversified and as an active research practice using the corresponding techniques took place, in his portfolio Jovanovski included the work with atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) atomic emission spectrometry with inductively coupled plasma (AES–ICP) and neutron activation analysis. Again, some of these studies were carried out in cooperation with researchers from institutions where the corresponding equipment was available.</jats:p>