Milan Piroćanac  Milan Piroćanac (; 7 January 1837 – 1 March 1897) was a Serbian jurist, politician, Prime Minister and the leader and founder of the Progressive Party. Milan Nedeljković was born in 1837 in Jagodina. His father Stevan Nedeljković, born in Pirot (hence his byname), was a Revolutionary veteran and "srez" chief of Knjaževac. His mother Milica, from the Jagodina "okrug", was earlier married to "vojvoda" Pavle Cukić. He finished primary school in Jagodina, gymnasium in Kragujevac and Belgrade. He continued studies in law at the Belgrade Lyceum (1854–56), after which he at the end of 1856 moved to Paris where he finished the Law University in 1860. In 1861 he studied at Heidelberg, until returning to Belgrade at the end of 1861. He adopted the name "Piroćanac" during his school years. Serbian politician Ilija Garašanin recruited Piroćanac into the Foreign Ministry of Serbia. After Serbia and Montenegro concluded an alliance in 1866, brokered by Prince Mihailo Obrenović and Prince Nikola I Petrović-Njegoš so that the two Serb principalities could jointly fight the Ottoman Empire, Piroćanac spent several months in Cetinje, as a political representative of Serbia, serving, in addition, as a secretary to Prince Nikola. He began a career as a judge in 1868 and was posted at the Court of Cassation in 1872. Piroćanac was elected Minister of Foreign Affairs in the conservative-liberal alliance cabinet led by Jovan Marinović (November 25, 1874 to January 22, 1875). After the end of his short ministerial term he returned to the Court of Cassation. Being a prominent member of the younger Western-educated Serbian conservatives, Piroćanac was the founder of the Progressive Party in 1880, gathered around the journal "Videlo" ("Daylight"), which propagated loyalty to the Crown and “law, freedom and progress”. Invited by Prince Milan Obrenović to form a government, Piroćanac formed a Progressive cabinet on October 19, 1880, that during its three years in office introduced significant reforms into Serbian society.