Milutin Milanković was born on the right bank of the Danube river, in the village of Dalj near the city Osijek in the Austro-Hungarian Empire on May 28, 1879 to a respectable family.

Milutin’s father Milan and Mother Jelisaveta, from a respectable Osijek family Muačević, had six children, three of whom died during their childhood and early adulthood. Milutin had a twin sister Milena and a younger brother Bogdan, a famous romanicist and musicologist. Milan Milanković owned a store of colonial goods that arrived on the Danube ships from Vienna, Bratislava, and Pest. Milutin’s father died at a very young age when Milutin was only six, so the caring for the children and the estate of more than fifty hectares of arable land and vineyards was taken up, alongside his mother, by Milutin’s uncle Vasa Muačević who would take care of Milutin until he started earning his own keep by working as an engineer.

Milutin completed his elementary school education at home, where a large part of his knowledge came from private tutors, however he also mastered some of the lessons on his own. Considering that even as a child he had a fragile constitution not predisposed for physical effort and competing with other children at sports, he was more suited to the spiritual world. From the very beginning of his education Milutin showed signs of being a bright and gifted student. He successfully finished elementary school alongside his brother and sister.

After elementary school, it was time to choose a high school. At the time there were two types of high schools: the classical grammar school and the real-grammar school. Each prepared students for a particular type of study. Thus in Osijek in 1889, Milutin began his high school education in a real-grammar school which prepared students for future studies in technology and agriculture, following the wish of his father who had hoped that his son would graduate from the Faculty of Agriculture and return to Dalj to take care of the family estate. Unfortunately for his family, he did not do so, but fortunately for Serbia and its residents, he became one of the world’s greatest and most esteemed scientists of all time.

He received his high school certificate on May 29, 1896, and he used it only once during his lifetime – to enroll in the Vienna Polytechnic Institute.

In 1896 he enrolled into Civil Engineering studies where he graduated as an engineer in six years, and in 1904 became a doctor of technical science. From 1905 to 1909 he worked as a civil engineer in several Viennese companies, and he gained a reputation as a project engineer for reinforced concrete buildings.

He applied for six patents which would be used to build numerous buildings on land belonging to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy at the time. He received his Ph.D. on December 3, 1904 at the Vienna University of Technology with a thesis entitled “Theory of Pressure Curves”. He defended his thesis brilliantly. By doing so, Milutin Milanković became the first Serb to receive a Ph.D. in technical science.

At the invitation of famous scientists Jovan Cvijić, Mihailo Petrović, and Bogdan Gavrilović, Milanković accepted the position of associate professor of applied mathematics at the newly-founded University of Belgrade. He would keep this position until his retirement in 1955.

In the meantime he was elected a full member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) and an associate member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (JAZU). He spent World War I in an internment in Budapest, publishing his most important works and participating in international scientific gatherings.

He started his career as a professor on October 3, 1909 at the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Philosophy. He was designated to teach three classes: Applied Mathematics, Celestial Mechanics and Theoretical Physics. However, he did not attend the courses in Celestial Mechanics and Theoretical Physics during his studies and had to prepare for his classes on his own. He did it quite successfully.

This combination of classes which he had to teach played a key role in Milanković’s decision to start developing his theory on the insolation of Earth and other planets.

In 1911 Milanković became interested in climatology. By studying scientific papers of the modern-day climatologist Julius von Hann, Milanković became aware of a significant issue which would become one of the main areas of his scientific research: the mystery of the ice age. The idea on the possible influence of astronomical factors on climate change was first considered by astronomer John Herschel (1792–1871), and later established by geologist Louis Agassiz (1807–1873). At the same time there were several attempts to explain the climate change caused by astronomical forces (the most important of which was a theory established by James Croll in the 1870s). Milanković also studied the works of Joseph Adhémar and James Croll whose pioneering theories on the astronomical origin of the ice age were officially rejected by their contemporaries. At the time, the prevailing belief among climatologists and geologists was that an ice age is caused by oceanic-volcanic influence. Even though they had reliable geological data on the scope of glaciation in the Alps, climatologists and geologists still could not discover the main causes, especially because the varying values of insolation on Earth were out of reach of these sciences during the previous ages. However, Milanković decided to follow their path and attempt to correctly calculate the magnitude of such changes. Milanković searched for the solution to this complex problem in the areas of spherical geometry, celestial mechanics, and theoretical physics. He started working on it in 1912 after perceiving that “most of meteorology is nothing but a collection of innumerable empirical findings, mainly numerical data, with traces of physics used to explain some of them [...] Advanced mathematics had no role in that science [...]”. His first work precisely described the present climate of the Earth and the way the Sun’s rays determine the temperature on the Earth’s surface after passing through the atmosphere. He published his first paper on the subject entitled “On the mathematical theory of climate” in Belgrade on April 5, 1912. His next paper on the same subject was published under the title “Distribution of the Sun’s radiation on the Earth's surface” on June 5,1913. He correctly calculated the intensity of insolation and further developed his mathematical theory by describing climate zones, that is, he calculated the insolation for specific parallels from the equator (0°) to the Earth’s poles (90°). His main goal was to develop a single integral mathematical theory that would connect the thermal conditions on planets with their revolutions around the Sun.

The July Crisis broke out in 1914 between Austria-Hungary and Serbia and led to the Great War.

At the beginning of World War I, he married Hristina Topuzović Tinka, and their only son Vasilije was born on the Catholic day of Christmas of 1915. However, during their honeymoon to his birthplace Dalj, World War I started, and since he became a citizen of the Kingdom of Serbia in 1910, he was imprisoned.

With the help of his wife Tinka, who tried everything possible to free her husband, he was released in 1914. After his release, he moved to Budapest with the help from his uncle Vasa and his former maths professor from the Vienna University, Emanuel Czuber.

After the war, Milanković returned with his family to Belgrade on March 19,1919. He continued his professorial career, becoming a full professor of Celestial Mechanics at the Faculty of Philosophy, and the appointment was signed on September 29, 1919. From 1912 to 1917, he published seven scientific papers on mathematical theories of climate both on the Earth and on the other planets. He formulated a precise, numerical climatological model with the capacity for reconstruction of the past and prediction of the future, and established the astronomical theory of climate as a generalized mathematical theory of insolation. When these most important problems of the theory were solved, and a firm foundation for further work built, Milanković finished a book which was published in French in Paris, 1920 under the title Théorie mathématique des phénomènes thermiques produits par la radiation solaire (“Mathematical Theory of Heat Phenomena Produced by Solar Radiation”). Immediately after the publication, meteorologists recognized it as a significant contribution to the study of contemporary climate. The works of Milanković from 1920, Lewis Fry Richardson from 1922, as well as Vilhelm Bjerknes from 1924, represent the foundation and the pioneering works of modern numerical weather prediction. Milanković was elected an associate member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1920.

Why are there no traces of the ice ages which happened in the distant past in Europe? That is the question that intrigued many scientists at that time, and especially Wegener, who had his own theory on the subject. He considered that in the distant geological past, all continents were a part of a single landmass, which only later became divided into the parts that are presently known to us. The conclusion of such a theory was that the orbital axis and its poles have not changed, but that the continents were drifting. Therefore, in the Carboniferous period, the Earth’s equator passed over Europe, and insolation that would have caused an ice age, could not happen.

This kind of theory required corresponding astronomical theory, based on mathematics and physics. For that reason, Wegener approached Milanković, who was already a famous scientist in the field of cosmic climatology and problems of changes in the Earth’s climate, and asked him to turn his attention to that problem. Since they were colleagues and good friends, Milanković readily accepted and started to work on the problem in 1925.

Since Milanković was always thorough in his work, he first had to study the problem he would work on in detail. It was a very complex problem, which required a lot of time and effort.

After a lot of work, Milanković reached the solution in the form of that now famous, differential equation. He was very sad that Wegener did not live to see the solution of the problem he initiated. Wegener died (froze to death) on Greenland during his third expedition. He was a passionate explorer and his death saddened not only Milanković, but the entire scientific world.

However, Milanković was comforted by the fact that Wegener’s father-in-law Köppen accepted the solution and presented it to the entire scientific community. Furthermore, the solution also corresponded with previous findings from the exploration of the Earth’s geological past.

• He made the most accurate calendar to date. The length of a tropical year is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds, while Milanković achieved the accuracy of 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 48 seconds. The year lasts only 2 seconds longer according to the most accurate calendar.
• Milanković never accepted Einstein’s theory of relativity, but that was the case with many other scientists at that time.
• A crater on the far side of the Moon, with a diameter of 34 km was named after him, and also a crater on Mars with a diameter of 118 km not to mention an asteroid with the name of 1605 Milanković.
• NASA ranked him among the top ten minds of all time in the field of earth sciences.
• Unlike Nikola Tesla or Mihajlo Pupin, he did not achieve world fame in the biggest cities of the world, rather he worked on his scientific theories in his room in “Kapetan Mišino zdanje” at Belgrade University, using only paper, pen, a caliper, and logarithmic tables.
• Milanković proved that Mars cannot support civilized life, because his calculations showed that the temperatures on Mars are too low to support life in such a form.
• The European Geophysical Society instituted the Milutin Milankovic Medal in 1993.
• He was one the leading minds in the history of astronomy and science in general, which he proved with several works.
• He is the most quoted Serbian scientist of all time.

During the German Occupation from 1941 to 1944, Milanković withdrew from public life and decided to compose the “history of his life and work”. His autobiography was published in 1979.

After the war, Milanković was elected vice president of the Serbian Academy of Sciences for three terms, from 1948 to 1958. From 1948 to 1951 he was the manager of the Astronomical Observatory in Belgrade, and in 1948 he became a member of the Commission 7 for celestial mechanics in the International Astronomical Union, when this institution continued its work after the war. In the same year, he became a member of the Italian Institute of Paleontology. In November 1954, fifty years after receiving his original diploma, he received a Golden Doctor's Ph.D. from the Vienna University of Technology. In 1955, he was elected an associate member to the German Academy of Naturalists "Leopoldina" in Halle, East Germany.

At the same time, Milanković began publishing numerous popular science books on the history of science, including: Isaac Newton and Newton's Principia (1946), The Founders of Natural Science Pythagoras – Democritus – Aristotle – Archimedes (1947), The History of Astronomy – from its beginnings up to 1727 (1948), Through the Empire of Science – images from the lives of great scientists (1950), Twenty-two Centuries of Chemistry (1953), and Techniques in Ancient Times (1955).

After several decades of work, in 1955, he retired from the position of professor of Celestial Mechanics at the Faculty of Philosophy. Milutin suffered a stroke and died in Belgrade in 1958, when he was 79.