Pavle Trpinac

For his care in the treatment of Soviet prisoners in German camps during the Second World War, by the decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, he was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the II degree in 1967.

Pavle Trpinac is best remembered for heading the teaching staff of the Biochemistry classes at the Department of Pharmaceutics in Belgrade from 1946 until his retirement. He was present when the Section for Sanitary Chemistry, combining medical biochemists, sanitary chemists and toxicologists, was founded in Belgrade on 1 January 1951. Later, that same section became the Serbian Section for Medical Biochemistry and Pavle Trpinac was appointed its first president. In 1960 when the Faculty of Medicine was established at the University of Niš, the first generation of students at the new faculty was taught by Dr. Pavle Trpinac.

When Professor Petar Matavulj passed away in 1948, Professor Trpinac became the director of the Chemical Institute of the Faculty of Medicine, as well as the director of the Institute of Biochemistry of the Faculty of Pharmacy. He transferred to the Faculty of Medicine in 1958, and the following year he was elected a full professor. During 1949, he spent three months in France, Belgium and Switzerland, gathering experiences from teaching biochemistry, as well as the organization of clinical chemistry laboratories.

In addition, he was a member of the first Scientific Council of the Chemical Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences, formed in 1948. He was the first president of the Section for Medical Biochemistry of the Pharmaceutical Society of Serbia.

During World War II, he was captured and taken into captivity in Germany, where he worked as a doctor in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp constructed specifically for Russian military and civilian internees. After the founding of the Faculty of Pharmacy in Belgrade, Assistant Professor Trpinac was appointed associate professor of Biochemistry in 1946.

Pavle Trpinac (Novi Sad, Austria-Hungary, 27 June 1905 - Belgrade, Serbia, Yugoslavia, 1991) was a Serbian chemist and professor at the University of Belgrade. His niece was poet Mira Alečković.

Pavle Trpinac was born on 27 June 1905, in Novi Sad, where he graduated from the local gymnasium. In 1925 he enrolled at the Medical Faculty of the University of Belgrade and graduated in 1934. During his studies, from 1927 to 1932, he worked as a demonstrator at the Chemical Institute of the Faculty of Medicine, that is until he completed his military service (1932-1933). Immediately after graduating, he was appointed assistant at the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade, then assistant-trainee in 1935, and assistant in 1938. In order to improve his chemistry, in the period from 1935 to 1937, Pavle Trpinac attended lectures during four semesters at the Technological Department of the Technical Faculty in Belgrade. He was appointed assistant professor of Medical Chemistry at the Medical Faculty in Belgrade in 1939. During 1936 and 1939. he studied in biochemistry at the 'Institut de Biologie in Paris and in the Laboratoire de phisico-chimique with Irène Joliot-Curie.