Analytical chemistry in Croatia

Analytical chemistry started to develop in Croatia as an independent scientific discipline at the Royal Agricultural and Forestry College in Krizevci (1860). Lectures in analytical chemistry began at the University of Zagreb in the school year 1875/76 within the University Institute of Chemistry. Today, analytical chemistry is taught as an independent course at eleven university faculties, in Zagreb, Split, Osijek and Rijeka. This paper presents a comparison of the compulsory contents of basic curricula in analytical chemistry in Croatia with the WPAC Eurocurriculum. Scientometric analysis of the Croatian scientific output covered by the Analytical Abstracts shows that during the 1980-1996 period Croatian analytical chemistry scientists published 442 papers, 89.6% of which were also indexed in SCI. Croatian analytical chemists most frequently deal with spectroscopic, chromatographic and electroanalytical methods. Distribution of the scientific analytical publications with respect to the number of authors, analytical method used and the number of total and independent citations is graphically presented