Dr. T. Tóth szerk.: Studia historico-anthropologica (Anthropologia Hungarica 18. Budapest, 1983)

ANTHROPOLOGIA HUNGARICA XVIII. 1982-1983 P- 5

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7 In memóriám Sándor Wenger (1916-1983) By T. TÓTH (Received November 29, 1983) In the 67th year of his life Sándor WENGER died on the 17th of July, 1983 after a long and severe disease. He was deputy leader of the Anthropological Department of the Hungarian Natural History Museum. He retired in August, 1979. He was born in Debrecen, on the 19th of July, 1916. Having completed his university studies he graduated at the University in Kolozsvár (Cluj); in the Institute for Anthropology of the same University directed by Prof. Mihály MALÄN, in the years of 1940-1944 at first he was employed as a junior clerk, later as an assistant. From January 1945 he took part in the re-arrangement of the scientific collection of the Hungarian National Museum and in that of its Botanical Department as well as in the removal of this Department. Having finished these works he did his best to establish an anthropological collection and to arrange the newly organized Anthropological Department of the Hungarian Natural History Museum. Under the leadership of Dr. János NEMESKÉRI he participated in the next twenty years in the conservation of the anthropological find which comprised many thousands of osteological remains. In this period he participated in the keeping and registration of the anthropological collections kept in the central Department as well as in the county museums (Pécs, Győr, Veszprém, Székesfehérvár, Debrecen). He was for years the registrar rí the collection kept in the Anthropological Department. In the years 1945-1965 he was vr ry active in the propagation of popular science. He held lectures in the people's high school, in factories, during the excavations in the country in the Hungarian Radio and Television. For years he wa-s the president of the Biological Agricultural Committe of the Budapest Organisation of the Society for Propagation of Sciences. He participated in the arrangement of the new exhibitions of the Natural History Museum on human origin (1955, 1962). He held more than one hundred

1 leptures in this exhibition and was the author of a great number of popular- works about anthropogenesis and human races. In the years 1950-1955 he participated in the investigations carried out on the physical status of Budapest students as well as in the processing of the statistical data and their evaluation. Hé was member of the team studying in these years the ethnic anthropology of the region Bodrogköz. WENGER held different voluntary public engagements in the Natural History Museum. In the years 1962-1973 he was elected member of the executive committee of the Anthropological Section of the Hungarian Biological Society. In the sessions of the mentioned Section he also held a number of lectures. In December 1966 he took his Ph.D. degree "summa cum laude" in anthropology at the József Attila University in Szeged. During the second part of his activity (1965-1979) he payed increased attention to elaborating the collected material and to pertaining methodical problems. Many of his publications have aroused interest of anthropologists in different countries, being obvious from the récognitive reviews written by H. VALLOIS, I. SCHWIDETZKY, M. C. CHAMLA, V.P. ALEXEYEV, K. GERHARDT and J. JELINEK. He was among the participants of two Hungarian Anthropological Symposia (1959, 1967) and of the Fifth International Finno-Ugric Con-