Page 107 - Življenjska pot matematika Iva Laha

Ivo Lah's Short Biography

Ivo (Janez) Lah was born on 5 July 1896 in Štrukljeva vas above Cerknica in the then
Austro-Hungarian monarchy. He started his schooling in Sv. Vid above Cerknica and
finished it in Marijanišče in Ljubljana and continued at the I (first) State Gymnasium Lju-
bljana, which he finished early in 1915 - just before graduation - because of the outbreak
of the First World War.

From an early age, Janezek had a great fondness for numbers and calculations. The
local parish priest soon discovered in the schoolboy an extraordinary talent for learning
and advised his father to send the boy on to schools. In the early years, however, he did
not particularly distinguish himself by his own headiness. He was once singled out by a
professor for a badly marked Slovenian assignment. After this reprimand, however, he
took to his studies, and the following year's certificate glowed with good grades, as it
was said to be the best graded of all the 500 pupils in the institution.

He was not particularly close to the teachers and lecturers, who were mainly fond of
fiction writers, poets, and novelists such as Ivan Cankar. Ivo Lah was impressed by the
exact sciences of mathematics, geometry, physics, astronomy, aeronautics, etc.

Just before graduating from high school at the beginning of the World War, he was mo-
bilised into the Austro-Hungarian army and, after his education, was sent as an officer
to the Isonzo (Soča) front, where he contracted typhoid fever. After recovering, he en-
thusiastically took part as an officer in the home front fighting for the northern Sloveni-
an border against Austria.

He was happy to do anything that paid off in terms of calculations, and he instructed
many pupils who were not gifted in calculations. Among other things, he took the math-
ematics entrance »exam« ten times instead of many failed students at the Academy of
Commerce in Zagreb.

In 1918, he enrolled at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Vien-
na. After the war, he completed his studies in Zagreb at the Royal College of Secondary
School Teachers with a recognised examination for teaching mathematics and physics
in secondary schools (1925). In parallel, he studied at the Royal College of Commerce
and Transport in Zagreb, graduating with a state examination (1923).

In 1927 and 1928 he studied private insurance with the Riunione Adriatica di Sicurtà In-
surance Association in Vienna.

From 1933 until the end of the World War, Lah was a member, committee member and
then editor of the Bulletin of the Actuarial Association of Yugoslavia, in the meantime
becoming a member of the Actuarial Association of Switzerland. He was delegated by
the National Association to several international congresses; between 1934 and 1938 he

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