Physicist Dr. Davor Pavuna, a professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, will give a motivational lecture next Thursday at the Lider conference ‘How to Succeed – a Black Swan in a Blue Ocean’.
An eccentric scientist whose faith in God bothers some Croatian scientists, but not the dean of the Institute where he works, who is a member of the prayer community founded by Pavuna. This native of Koprivnica is working on establishing a network of scientists and strategic incubators to support young educated people who would stimulate the development of Croatia. He is proud of the Order of Danica Hrvatska featuring Nikola Tesla, an award he received in 2006 for scientific contributions, inventions, and international cooperation from President Stjepan Mesić. In addition to physics, social and spiritual engagement, Pavuna is involved in music, playing guitar in the group Tsha-Coo, with which he performs during breaks at scientific conferences.
At the Lider conference, you will give a motivational lecture ‘Yes, we can do it’. What was your motivation on the path to success?
– I was born exactly five centuries after Leonardo da Vinci, and in order to be accepted into the Fifth Gymnasium in Zagreb after finishing elementary school in Osijek, I had to pass an entrance exam. I scored one hundred percent on the math test! This gave me the confidence for top scientific achievements, and my father, a geneticist, told me: ‘Become a top expert in your field and everyone will respect you.’ I loved languages and literature, I read great authors like Goethe, his ‘Faust’, or Gandhi’s autobiography, often in the original, but I was particularly impressed by the verses of A. B. Šimić ‘Man, be careful not to go small beneath the stars’. This immediately became my life motto! And in the physics program at PMF, Prof. Leontić gave us the hardest general physics textbook, that of Nobel laureate Feynman, and it was in English. I loved that, realizing that the best choose better than themselves and that true experts know their field. During the preparation of my thesis, I also read Solzhenitsyn’s ‘The Gulag Archipelago’, which completed my credo: ‘Most people cut the trunk where it is soft. Only the exceptional are stubbornly persistent and cut through the hard knot, but after that, nothing can stop them!’ That’s why after graduation I took the guitar, flew to England for my doctoral studies, and since then I have been successfully cutting through life’s knots.
You are an advisor to the governments of some countries. Has anyone from any of the Croatian governments sought your advice?
– Foreign governments and corporations are very eager to call me because I am professionally coherent. Since 1995, I have been in contact with every Croatian government, but only in a narrow segment, mainly with the Ministry of Science. It seems they have not dared to accept my other insights and information in many strategic segments, e.g., insights from complexity, coherent finance, green energy. My former students work in power centers around the world, and I have a large network of friends in important institutions, so I receive information directly that the media rarely learns. In Croatia, even the intelligence services have withheld information, so they have not yet decoded the ‘swastika at Poljud’ in this time when everything (yes, everything!) is recorded and when we in laboratories track the dynamics of every quantum. But that is also improving.
