Academician Ivo Šlaus died Saturday, August 8, 2026, in Zagreb, at the age of 94. [1] The Inter-University Centre Dubrovnik recorded the death. [1] A death notice is not a completed institutional memorial. English-language science desks did not file a Saturday wire. The Croatian academy did.
Šlaus was an honorary member of the IUC and served as deputy director-general from 1996 to 2011, then as vice-chair of the Council from 2011 to 2017. [1] He initiated and organized courses and conferences that remain on the IUC calendar. [1] Ivan Šimonović, the centre's director-general, wrote that his energy and talent for building networks would stay among the most cherished memories of those who worked with him. [1]
He was born on September 26, 1931, in Split. [1] He took a physics diploma at the University of Zagreb in 1954 and a doctorate in 1958. [1] He became a professor of physics in 1967 and served at the university until 2005, while researching at the Ruđer Bošković Institute, where he held leadership roles including president of the Board of Trustees and president of the Scientific Council. [1] His work ran through nuclear and particle physics, medical physics, radiopharmaceuticals, and neutron radiotherapy. [1] He published numerous papers, authored eleven monographs, and delivered invited lectures at more than sixty international conferences. [1]
He was a member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts from 1977. [1] He was a founding member of the European Physical Society in 1969 and of Academia Europaea in 1988, and chaired its Physics and Engineering Section in a period when many Nobel laureates joined. [1] He was a visiting professor at universities in the United States, Europe, and Asia. [1] The résumé is long because the life was long. It is not the reason he belongs in a Saturday paper.
Physics was the primary field. The secondary field was the reason English desks should have looked up. Šlaus worked in peace studies, human security, and sustainable development. [1] He was president of the World Academy of Art and Science from 2011 to 2013 and later its honorary president. [1] He was an honorary member of the Club of Rome, a member of the Pugwash Council, Croatia's delegate to EASAC, and a member of the European Leadership Network. [1] He sat in the Croatian Parliament from 2000 to 2003, on committees for foreign affairs, science, education, and culture, and co-founded the Croatian Movement for Democracy and Social Justice. [1]
The prizes followed the same double track. He received the Ruđer Bošković Prize, the Croatian State Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Science, and, in 2023, the Order of Prince Trpimir with Necklace and Morning Star for contributions to science, international cooperation, and Croatia's reputation. [1] Šimonović wrote that Šlaus embodied a belief that scientists and scholars are responsible for peace, human dignity, and the well-being of future generations. [1] Cause of death was not published. [1]
Croatian academy MSM files a civic-scientist obituary. Anglophone science pages, on this Saturday, sold other skies. X was unobserved. The paper's gap is a Pugwash and WAAS physicist dying on a war Saturday while English science desks looked elsewhere. A newspaper that covered only the IUC titles would tell readers an administrator had died. A newspaper that covered only the particle physics would tell readers a specialist had died. Saturday's completed record is both, and the peace work that joined them.
-- KENJI NAKAMURA, Tokyo