To mark the tenth anniversary of the passing of Dr Dragan Popović, the Institute of Physics Belgrade organized a one-day memorial conference honouring Dr Popović. The event formed part of a broader programme commemorating the legacy of the Institute’s long-serving director and esteemed colleague. A memorial event, which featured the unveiling of Dr Popović’s bust in the presence of his family, preceded the conference.
The conference was organized by the Group for Gravity, Particles and Fields and High Energy Physics Laboratory where most of former associates of Dr Popović currently does their research. The topics presented during the conference come from Dr. Popović’s areas of scientific interest – theoretical and experimental high-energy physics, relativistic physics, quantum gravity, and related areas of research.
The conference was attended by numerous colleagues and close associates of Dr Popović who came from various research institutions, members of his family as well as students and young researchers who did not have the opportunity to meet Dr Popović but came to learn more about his scientific contributions and the disciplines to which he dedicated his career.
The memorial conference was opened by the Institute’s director, Dr Aleksandar Bogojević, who gave a welcome speech in which he reflected on the legacy of Dr Dragan Popović and the subsequent development of the Institute of Physics related to the international cooperation, diaspora return, and fostering excellence in scientific research.
The programme included a short documentary film on the life and work of Dr Popović, as well as a letter from Professor Tsuneo Uematsu, emeritus professor at Kyoto University in Japan and a long-time colleague and friend of Dr Popović, who recalled their long-term cooperation and warm friendship, underscoring his lasting contribution.
The members of the Conference Organization Board, encompassing Dr Branislav Cvetković, Dr Marko Vojinovic and Dr Nenad Vranješ, noted that, in keeping with Dr Popović’s lifelong dedication and enthusiasm for fundamental physics, the lectures presented during the event represented the forefront of contemporary research in high-energy physics and gravity.
‘One of the goals of this conference was to introduce Dragan Popović’s scientific contributions to younger generations of researchers and to highlight his significance not only as the Institute’s director but also as someone who helped shape the research directions in both theoretical and experimental elementary particle physics in the late 20th and early 21st century’, said Dr Branislav Cvetković.
The scientific programme of the conference began with Professor Branislav Sazdović’s lecture titled From symmetry group to free field equations. The speakers included Dr Nenad Vranješ with his lecture Precision measurements of Standard Model parameters at the ATLAS experiment at CERN, Professor Dr Maja Burić who spoke about ‘Geometry and Physics 3.0’, Academician Đorđe Šijački with a lecture Standard Model – Beyond and Aside and Professor Dr Voja Radovanović who shed light on ‘BV Quantization of Braided Field Theories’.
Photos by: Bojan Džodan