He was born on 3 September 1946 in Niksic, where he completed elementary and high school. He got a degree at the Faculty of Science, Department of Physics in Belgrade. He worked in high school in Niksic from 1969 to 1972 as a teacher of physics. He enrolled postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Science in Belgrade (Department of Physics – Experimental Nuclear Physics) in 1973, when he began working in the Institute of Physics of the University of Belgrade (Laboratory for High Energy Physics). At that time, he worked part-time as a teaching assistant of the Department of Physics, Faculty of Science and Faculty of Pharmacy. Having defended his master thesis “Multiplicity of charged particles produced in the interaction of protons of 200 GeV with nuclei of nuclear emulsion” in January 1976, he went on scientific specialization in the United Institute of Nuclear Research (Laboratory for High Energy Physics) in Dubna (Russia).
During the specialization he worked in the international group of physicists in the field of high energy physics (high-energy interactions of particles and nuclei with nuclei). He stayed in Dubna until August 1978. He defended PhD thesis “Interaction p-mesons pulses 40 GeV / c with a carbon nuclei” in 1979 at the Faculty of Science in Belgrade. He moved to Titograd in October 1979, where he started to work at the Institute of Mathematics and Physics. The same year, he was promoted to assistant professor. He was appointed associate professor in 1985 and a full professor in 1991.
He was head of the Department of Physics (1980-1986, and 1994-1996) at the Institute of Mathematics and Physics for several years, and from 1986 to 1990 and from 1998 to 2002, as the director of the Institute and also as the dean of Faculty of Sciences. From 1990 to 1994 he was vicerector for Academic Affairs of the University of Montenegro. From 2003 to 2008 he was the Minister of Education and Science of the Republic of Montenegro.
His scientific research concerned high-energy particle interactions with nuclei and nuclei with nuclei and took place in the framework of international collaboration which is working on a multi-year project study of quark-hadron structure of nuclear matter, finding and studying the properties of exotic phenomena in collisions of relativistic nuclei. He was a chairman of many years research project Nuclear Physics with Applications (1987-1990, and 1991-1995), and the topic on which he worked was involved in the Yugoslav project of experimental particle physics, medium energy and heavy ions in international centers. He managed the project high-energy interactions of nuclei (1997-1998), as well as international projects that were financed by UNESCO High energy nucleus-nucleus interactions (1998-1999) and WUS High energy nucleus-nucleus and hadron-hadron interactions (1999). He also worked in European collaboration H1 (DESY Hamburg). During these projects four doctoral and four master's theses were submitted and defended under the mentorship of Slobodan Backović.
He is an author and coauthor of over 100 scientific papers, which can be found in the electronic databases: http://inspirehep.net/search?ln=en&p=find+a+s+backovic&of=hb&action_search=Search;http and http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=fXGhNVwAAAAJ&hl=en
and https://www.researchgate.net/profile/S_Backovic/contributions?ev=prf_act.
His bibliography can be seen at: http://vbcg.vbcg.me/cobiss/bibliografije/Y20141102154659-00001.html.
He is a coauthor of workbooks and one textbook for high school, a coauthor of the translation of university collections of problems in physics, "Problems in General Physics" (I.E. Irodov) and an author of the university textbook "Physical Mechanics".
He was a member of the Presidency of the Federation of Associations of mathematicians and physicists of Yugoslavia as secretary of the National Committee for Physics from 1980 to 1985. He was the president of the Physical Society of Montenegro (1986-1998), the president of the Educational Council of Montenegro, a member of the Council of Science of Montenegro, a member of the Executive Committee of the republic for the scientific activities of Montenegro. He was a member of the Federal Commission for the safety of nuclear facilities. He participated in the organization of state and federal competitions in physics for students of secondary and primary schools (Association of Mathematicians and Physicists and movement "Youth Science"). He is a member of the DANU (Doclean Academy of Sciences and Arts), he was an expert of the Federal Ministry for Development, Science and Environment in the field of physics. He won the National award "Oktoih" for 1999. In 2002, he coordinated the activities on education reform in Montenegro, and he was a chairman of the Commission for the reform of elementary school.
In the period 2008-2011 he was Montenegro's ambassador in the Russian Federation. Since October 2011 to October 2014 he was rector of the University "Mediterranean".
As an associate member of CANU (Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts) he was elected on 12 December 2003, and as a full member on 29 November 2011.
He lives and works in Podgorica.