L. Forró szerk.: Miscellanea Zoologica Hungarica 12. 1998 (Budapest, 1998)

Dely, O. Gy.: In commemoration of Mrs. Baron Géza Fejérváry, Dr. Aranka Mária Lángh (1898-1988)

MISCELLANEA ZOOLOGICA HUNGARICA Tomus 12. 1998 p. 121-126 In commemoration of Mrs. Baron Géza Fejérváry, Dr. Aranka Mária Lángh (1898-1988) by O. Gy. Dely (Received May 29,1998) Mrs. Baron Géza Fejérváry, Dr. Aranka Mária Lángh, a celebrated representative of Hungarian and international zoology and herpetology was born 100 years ago, and died 10 years ago. These two anniversaries provide a good opportunity for commemorating her life, her 30 years long scientific career as a herpetologist, and her role as a popularizer of science and as a museologist. All the more so, since this has not been done previously. I feel that taking this task upon me is my duty, as she was my direct predecessor, the curator and collection manager of the Herpetology Collection, accepting me, a freshly graduated museologist on 1 July 1950 on a ministerial scholarship, and, additionally, making me, as a new researcher of the State Natural History Museum (now Hungarian Natural History Museum) acquainted with the valuable collection, in which her husband, Dr. Baron Géza Gyula Fejérváry, and his famous predecessor, Dr. Lajos Méhely were doing their even internationally well-known research. Aranka Mária Lángh was born on 18 April 1898 in a middle-class family. Her interest in nature, and in animals in particular, became obvious already in her childhood, even though she received no particular encouragement from her family. Her father, Dr. Gyula Lángh was a lawyer, the main task of her mother, Flóra Löwl was, besides housekeeping, to provide a warm, homely environment. Her love of and attraction to animals was probably based on frequent excursions and the experiences of her collecting trips. She continued her studies at the secondary school "M. kir. Állami Felsőbb Leányiskola és Leánygimnázium" (= Hungarian Royal State Highschool and Lyceum for Girls) on Andrássy Street in Budapest, and graduated in 1915. In the Autumn of the same year she signed for natural history-geography at the Liberal Arts (Philosophy) Faculty of the Pázmány Péter University in Budapest. As a first-year student, she got to know the then assistant of the Zoological Faculty, and her to-be husband and co-worker, Baron Géza Gyula Fejérváry, who was to turn her interest towards animals, particularly amphibians and reptiles. When Fejérváry returned from the University to the Zoological Department of the Hungarian National Museum (now Department of Zoology of the Hungarian Natural History Museum), also Aranka Mária Lángh - as Fejérváry's future wife - accompanied him to the Herpetological Collection of the Museum on 26 October 1916, first as a voluntary, "unpaid" assistant. She made her basic examinations as a teacher in 1917. She was still a student when her first systematic and faunistic paper appeared in the museum's Annales for the year 1917. In this she discussed five amphibian species from northern Hungary on the basis of Dr. Sándor Pongrácz's collections made in July 1916 around Lubló (Szepes County). In the same year, on 5 October 1917, she gave her first presentation at the Zoological Section ("Állattani Szakosztály") with the title "On the rudimentary ribs of anu-