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

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

to mammalogy. In this period, he lectured frequently in the Zoological Section of the Hungarian Society of Natural Sciences. The threatening storm of World War II broke also into his life. He was called up for military service in 1942, and by the intervention of Professor L. VARGA he was assigned, as a teacher with the rank of captain, to the Cadet School at Pécs. He read there geography, natural history, and topography. After a short captivity, he was again in active military service in 1945, and beginning with 1947 he lectured in the rank of major at the Kossuth Military Academy, leading a study group in topography and military geography. At his own request, however, his commission was soon suspended, and then w

y

as able to continue his pre-war teaching at Kecskemét, acting as primary school-inspector from 1948 and as inspector of the natural sciences for the whole Comitat from October, 1950. At the beginning of November, 1950, he was appointed to a museologist's post in the Hungarian Natural History Museum so that, after nearly two decades of thwarted ambitions, his scientific vocation—his most ardent wish—was finally on the way of realization. In the Hungarian Natural History Museum, he set to work with incredible energy and enthusiasm in one of the biggest and museologically most problematic collections of the Zoological Department, namely the Mammalogical Collection, of which he soon became the Keeper. Under his leadership, the scientific material of the collection, having suffered but small losses as compared to several other ones during the conflagration in 1956, was nearly doubled in relation to its size after the first post-war years. Sparing no efforts he, too, participated in the extensive field work launched, beside the exploration of the faunistic conditions and distribution of our home mammalian fauna, mainly for the acquisition of as large a comparative material as possible. He saw it quite clearly that without recourse to an adequately extensive material no further remarks can today be offered on even the simplest details of modern mammalogical problems. Fully aware of his responsibilities and in accordance with his rugged and outspoken personality, he fought for the interests of his science and the collection entrusted to him and thus soon gained the respect and affection of his fellow workers and assistants. In the last years of his life, he partook also in the management of the Zoological Department, as Deputy Director and the Chief Keeper of all vertebrate collections. The major part of his scientific work was also done during the years spent in the Museum (cf. his Papers No. 11-61). He worked on several groups of the insectivores, rodents, duphcidentates, ungulates, and carnivores. His contributions came from the fields of taxonomy, faunistics, anatomy and osteology, ecology and ethology, and also the study of diseases spread by mammals. Some of them discussed also methodological problems. SZUNYOGHY studied also the history of introduction and settling of game in Hungary. His main results in this respect derive from researches made on the taxonomic, osteologic, hunting, etc. problems of the Hungarian red deer, results utilisable also in applied zoology. He was especially interested in problems relating to the study of Hungarian sheep dogs, the osteological examination of horse skeletons from the Avar Period, and in many others which he had no more opportunity to elaborate. His papers contain many of his excellent illustrations, drawings and figures which express with complete scientific authenticity their creator's sharp vision, prominent sense of form and accuracy. He wrote all of his work with utter absorption in the theme, and weighed carefully all sides of a problem before commencing to elucidate it in writing. Beside the deleterious effects of the two averse decades wellnigh shunting his innate vocation and chosen object of life, it must have been this very intensified responsibility, the boundless