Today, on 23 January 2025, prof. dr. Franc Gologranc, certainly one of the oldest Slovenian professors, definitely the oldest former professor of our Faculty and also its oldest graduate, celebrates his one hundred and fifth birthday. Prof. dr. Gologranco’s course and grade book bears the number 16, which means that he has witnessed the development of the Faculty since its inception.
Prof. dr. Gologranc began his professional career 75 years ago as a graduate mechanical engineer and has continued to develop his work and knowledge in both academic and commercial fields. He holds a doctorate from the Institute for Forming Technology at the University of Stuttgart. He has taught at our Faculty for more than three decades and has made a significant contribution to its pedagogical, scientific and research image.
We sincerely congratulate Professor Gologranc on his astonishing one hundred and five years of life and, with great gratitude for his outstanding teaching and research, wish him good health and happiness! We are convinced that his views, values and professionalism will be an important guide for us, the younger generations. We are honoured to carry on his work.
More about prof. dr. Gologranc
Photo: personal archive
Prof. dr. Franc Gologranc was born in 1920 in Slovenske Konjice. After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the Faculty of Technology in Ljubljana, where, after a six-year interruption due to the war, he graduated as a mechanical engineer in February 1950. Initially a designer in the design office of the Ministry of Heavy Industry, he was appointed assistant professor at the Institute of Mechanical Technology at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Ljubljana in 1952. From 1952 to 1958 he spent a long period in Germany for postgraduate studies and specialisation.
Until 1960, prof. dr. Gologran’s professional and teaching activities focused on the broader field of mechanical engineering and machine tools. In 1961, he was habilitated as assistant professor of moulding technique and theory of plastic moulding – then newly introduced technological disciplines at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. From 1967-74 he was an occasional research fellow at the Institute for Forming Technology at the University of Stuttgart, where he obtained his doctorate in 1975. He became a full professor at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Ljubljana in 1982. For three decades he lectured at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Ljubljana and its branches throughout Slovenia. He was a Module 7 mentor until his retirement, mentoring over 100 undergraduate and postgraduate mechanical engineering students.
In 1968 he set up the Forming Laboratory, where the first systematic research into the cold mass transformation of steels soon began. He later extended his scientific research into the determination of the formability of thin sheet metal and the development of computerised hardware for the determination of formability characteristics.
Prof. dr. Franc Gologranc has been the principal investigator of numerous research projects and has also been involved in many applied development tasks for industry. He has published 50 independent articles and papers at home and abroad, and has written four university textbooks and one monograph abroad. His 1963 textbook Tehnika preoblikovanja (Technique of Forming) was reprinted in a second edition in Maribor, and his 1978 textbook Uvod v preoblikovanje (Introduction to Forming) has also been reprinted several times. The first book of the multi-part monograph Preoblikovanje (Forming), which deals with the theoretical foundations, was published in 1991, and in 1999 he wrote the second part of the monograph Preoblikovanje (Forming), which deals with the transformation of massive raw materials.