MARKO ANTUN DE DOMINIS Marko Antun de Dominis, in Croatian Domnianich (1560 – 1624), the archbishop of Split, theologian and physicist was born in Rab in 1560, i.e. 450 years ago. He becomes a member of „The Society of Jesus“ in 1579; studies theology in Padua from 1587 to 1591, and teaches philosophy Brescia from 1592. He drops out from the „Society of Jesus“ in 1596; becomes bishop of Senj in 1597 and archbishop of Split in 1602. In conflict between Rome and Venice, in 1606, when Pope Paul V made a curse and interdicted the Venetian Republic, De Dominis sided with the Republic denying to the Pope the right to interfere with the affairs of the profane government. In 1611 De Dominis publishes in Venice his first work in the field of physics, on the theory of lens and rainbow– De radiis visus et lucis in vitris perspectivis et iride. After finding out in 1612 that De Dominis reportedly was preparing a work against the Pope and the church policy, the roman court advised De Dominis to abandon the writing, which advice he did not take.
IVAN MATETIĆ RONJGOV Croatian composer, melograph and music educator Ivan Matetić Ronjgov was born 10 April 1880 in a small village of Ronjgi (comunity Viškovo), according to which to his family name the attachment Ronjgov has been added. He finished Teacher Training College in Koper, where he acquired his first music knowledge and after formal schooling, in the period between 1899 and1912 he taught in many Istiran villages, and later, till 1919, in Opatija. Though already skilled in composition and in choir conducting, it is only in his mature age that he will acquire professional education at the Music Academy in Zagreb, where he graduates in 1922 in the class of Franjo Dugan, the older. After three years spent at the Sušak Gymnasium as a teacher in singing, he returns back to Zagreb in 1925 and becomes a secretary at the Music Academy. From 1938, when he retires, till 1945 he lives in Belgrade but after the end of the war he returns first to Zagreb and in 1946 to his Rijeka. There he works for some time as a part-time teacher at Music School, today bearing his name. Though already in advanced age, he often pays visits to Istrian, costal and island villages, writes down, listens, analyses and diligently composes music.
JANKO POLIĆ KAMOV By his flashy passage through the expanses of Croatian literature, by his daring testing of hardly dreamt potential of his mother tongue and even more daring questioning of almost all national customs, practices, manners, heritage and values, Janko Polić has turned an essentially new page in Croatian literature creating a radically modern sensibility. Having taken a pseudonym Kamov, after a biblical character who questions his father’s authority and mocks at it, he himself has stressed in a programmatic way his own rebellious attitude, and after having tried himself in this revolutionary way in all most important literary forms (poems, short stories, novel, drama and feuilleton) he gave to our literature an authentic avant-garde dimension worthy of great European protagonists. We should not forget that all his work was written in a sort of creative fever, during only three or four years of his activity, which amplitude ended in the first decade of the 20th century (parallel to universal appearance of cubism and expressionism, mostly before the appearance of the well known Futurist Manifesto).
GRGO GAMULIN Through his reach literary work and fruitful teaching activity, his exceptional social initiatives and persistent insisting on highly professional level and genuine humanistic values, the art historian and university teacher Grgo Gamulin das left deep traces in several areas of artistic creation and in several exceptional chapters in recent Croatian culture. As concerns the quantity and value of his published work and the diversity of his engagement one could think that he had a stable professional career, peaceful cabinet and lecturing work; however, his life was full of obstacles and oscilations, polemics and interruption, even paradoxes and contradictions, which also makes him amblematic for our region in the time of many turbulent years in the 20th century.
