Szekessy Vilmos (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 62. (Budapest 1970)
Topál, Gy.: In memoriam Dr. János Szunyoghy (1908-1969)
devotion to scientific truth and factuality, his wish of an ever more consummate self-expression, and the continual consideration of a wide spectrum of problems, which had to a certain extent frittered away his energies, denying the time necessary for the complete deliverance of his knowledge gained from so much work and based on such a rich experience. His scientific achievements are closely connected also with his participation in the collecting and hunting expedition to Tanzania in 1959-60, sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, for the replacement of the specimens annihilated in 1956 in the Africa Exhibition of the Natural History Museum, as well as his independent one-year collecting trip some years later (1965-66) also in Tanzania. During these voyages —as he wrote in one of his books: "in the world of my dreams"—he worked incessantly and with indefatigable diligence to obtain, beside the animals intended for the future Africa Exhibition of the Museum, a possibly complete scientific collection of all representatives of the African mammals. And in this he was more than successful, since it was for the first time during its 150 years of history that our Museum now T received an unbelievably rich mammalian material — and from the hands of an expert collector ! Beside the mammals, SZTJNYOGHY also gathered also a most substantial insect and other invertebrate material; its evaluation by specialists began already during his life. This collection enriched science by many new species, some of them dedicated to their collector. And he, too, bent himself to the task of working up the African mammals, principally from an osteological standpoint. During his two visits to the Museum of the Humboldt University in Berlin he was already working on the realization of this project, gathering, on the other hand, also further material for his big work on our home antlered game. Fate, however, decreed otherwise — and many of his manuscripts remain unfinished, for the great loss of zoology and especially mammalogy. In 1962, SZTJNYOGHY qualified for the degree of candidate in the biological sciences in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He also directed, to the date of his death, the work of the Section CT since Hungary joined the International Biological Program. In 1964, he was decorated with the Silver Medal, Order of Work, conferred by the government in recognition of his scientific and museological work, and in 1966 he was appointed titular professor of the University. As a scientist endowed also with excellent pedagogical abilities, Dr. J. SZTJNYOGHY was singularly active in the planning and the execution of exhibitions by the Natural History Museum and of many other natural history displays in Hungary. We see it all too clearly today that his departure from also this field is an irreparable loss to our Museum. Beside his scientific papers, he published nearly 50 essays, communications, and articles addressed to the general public. His, book on his African voyages, his lectures in television and his many public appearances—when he spoke in an animated and racy Hungarian diction—made his name well-known, and through him also the work done in the Natural History Museum. His merits are truly imperishable in the spreading among the greater public of the results of modern zoology, a better cognizance of the world of animals, and a cultured attitude towards natural history. He loved nature and explored her truths passionately. It was with the same ardour that he tought and educated so many. The great breaks in his career may have made him more reserved and sensitive than the average man, but whoever had the luck to have been on intimate terms with him had come to know a warmhearted, well-wishing, unselfish individual. He will live forever in the memory of
