Milorad B. Protić
| 1517 Beograd | 20 March 1938 |
| 1550 Tito | 29 November 1937 |
| 1554 Yugoslavia | 6 September 1940 |
| 1564 Srbija | 15 October 1936 |
| 1675 Simonida | 20 March 1938 |
| 2244 Tesla | 22 October 1952 |
| 2348 Michkovitch | 10 January 1939 |
Milorad B. Protić (Template:Lang-sr-cyr; 19 September 1911, Belgrade – 29 October 2001, Belgrade) was a Serbian astronomer, discoverer of comets and minor planets, and three times director of the Belgrade Observatory.[2]
Life and work
Protić finished a technical secondary school in 1921 and worked as a technical draftsman until 1931.[3] He joined the Belgrade Observatory in 1932,[4] while in 1936 he started observations of minor planets, comets, and satellites, which have been continuously performed until the present-day.[3]
Protić is credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of 7 numbered asteroids during 1936–1952,[1] including 1675 Simonida, named after queen Simonida, wife of medieval Serbian king Stefan Milutin, and 2348 Michkovitch, a rare Erigone asteroid named after Vojislav Mišković (1892–1976), who was a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and head of the Belgrade Observatory.[5] Protić also independently discovered comet C/1947 Y1.[2]
Protić died on 29 October 2001 in Belgrade. The main-belt asteroid 22278 Protitch, discovered by Henri Debehogne at ESO's Chilean La Silla site in 1983, was named in his memory.[2] Naming citation was published on 30 December 2001 (M.P.C. 44186Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".).[6]
Also, the outer main-belt asteroid 1724 Vladimir is named after Protić's grandson Vladimir Benišek, while 5397 Vojislava is named after Vojislava Protić-Benišek, his daughter, who has been a member of the observatory's staff since 1972, where she continues her father's work on celestial mechanics and minor planets, together with her son.[4]