Revolution and Insolation
How Milutin Milanković has assembled the puzzle of the climate?

 

Aleksandar Petrović

 

Milutin Milanković (1879 – 1958), professor of Applied Mathematics at Belgrade University, was a Serbian mathematician, famous for his revolution in the understanding of climate change dynamics. He set up climatology as an exact science, initiated numerical modeling of the climate and facilitated mathematical interpretation of long quasi-periodic climate changes, and created the basic organon for the understanding of the Earth’s ice ages which is one of the main scientific challenges today. He demonstrated the interrelatedness of celestial mechanics and the Earth sciences, enabled consistent transition from celestial mechanics to the Earth sciences and transformation of descriptive sciences into exact ones. Considering seasonal and latitudinal distribution of the Earth’s insolation, caused by changes in the Earth’s orbital geometry, Milanković formulated the astronomical theory of climate as a generalized mathematical theory of insolation - the only theory of climate that can be verified mathematically and tested geologically.