Dragan Primorac

Dragan Primorac, born in 1965, is a Croatian physician, geneticist, forensic scientist and politician. Trained at the University of Split medical school, he worked in the United States before returning to Croatia, where he founded a clinical and forensic genetics laboratory that identified war victims from mass graves. He served as Minister of Science, Education and Sports in the governments of Ivo Sanader from 2003 to 2009, overseeing the Bologna process, national exams and free school textbooks, and resigned in 2009 after a proposed budget cut. After being removed from the Croatian Democratic Union he ran for president in 2009, and he ran again in the 2024 to 2025 election, when he reached the runoff and lost to the incumbent Zoran Milanović with about 25 percent of the vote. He is also a university professor and has authored hundreds of scientific papers.