Academic Jakov Pehar

Academic Pehar was born in 1928 in Struge, municipality of Čapljina. He spent his childhood and early youth in his hometown Struge, after which he arrived in Mostar where he completed his high school education (1949). He graduated in 1954 from the then Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry in Sarajevo, after which he began his professional career in the economy working in various jobs and managerial positions. With his transfer to the Research and Development Center within HEPOK (1969), which would twenty-five years later evolve into the Agronomic Institute of the University of Mostar, academic Pehar began more serious scientific-research work. He obtained the academic degree of Master of Science in 1975 at the Institute of Horticulture in Belgrade, where he also defended his doctoral dissertation in 1981 and earned the title of Doctor of Science in Garden Architecture.

From 1985 to 1989, he was engaged in the teaching process at the Faculty of Agriculture in Novi Sad, after which, as an external collaborator in the status of associate professor, he spent two years at the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Zagreb.

In 2004, academic Pehar was elected to the honorary title of professor emeritus. He crowned his career in 2014 when he was elected as a regular member and the first president of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in BiH. His election to the rank of regular member in the Class for Natural Sciences of HAZU BiH was based on the results of his rich scientific, teaching, and professional contributions. To the “academic table,” academic Pehar contributed more than hundreds of scientific and professional papers, authored textbooks, monographs, and publications that he tirelessly wrote over more than sixty years of creative work, among which we highlight the textbooks Horticulture, Agroecology, and Agroecology and Environmental Protection, and as the chief editor, academic Pehar signed the Lexicon of Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the first volume of the Croatian Encyclopedia of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Academic Pehar is also a recipient of numerous other awards, among which the decorations of the Republic of Croatia, the Order of Danica Hrvatska, and the Commemorative Medal of the Homeland War stand out, as well as the Plaque of the University of Mostar; the Plaque of the University Džemal Bijedić in Mostar, and the Plaque of the deserving citizen of the City of Mostar.

One of the most deserving persons for establishing the urban foundations of Čapljina as we know it today.