Szekessy Vilmos (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 62. (Budapest 1970)

Topál, Gy.: In memoriam Dr. János Szunyoghy (1908-1969)

ANNALES HISTORICO-NATURALES MUSEI NATION ALI S HUNGARICI Tomus 62. 1970. In Memóriám Dr. János Szunyoghy (1908-1969) By GY. TOPÁL, Budapest Dr. J. SZUNYOGHY, the distinguished mammalogist, Deputy Director of the Zoological Department of the Hungarian Natural History Museum, passed away in his sixty-first year of life, after a protracted sickness, on 20 June, 1969. His departure is a great loss to Hungarian zoology and the Natural History Museum mourns for one of its most renowned scientist. JÁNOS SZUNYOGHY was born at Kisújszállás on 18 September, 1908. His mother was JUSTINE POLGÁR, his father FARKAS SZUNYOGHY, drawing instructor of the woman teachers' school, whose artistic abilities he too inherited. He studied at the University of Sciences in Budapest, receiving his teacher's diplom by majoring in natural history and geography in 1932. His interest and talents in natural sciences were soon realized by our leading zoologists of that time, and G. FEJÉRVÁRY, professor of the University of Sciences at Pécs, invited him to be his assistant. However, FEJÉRVÁEY'S early and sudden death, one of the gravest tragedies affecting SZUNYOGHY'S life for a long time to come, frustrated all his future plans. His doctoral thesis — one of his best works — on our home Colubrids and snake fossils was published in the Swedish Acta Zoologica so that though receiving his doctor's degree in philosophy from Professor HANKÓ of the University of Sciences at Debrecen in 1933 he had no possibility to obtain a scientific post. From 1933 till 1942, he worked as schoolmaster at Kecskemét. Nevertheless, he persisted in continuing his zoological studies in his spare time, but he changed from herpetology