Matskási István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 90. (Budapest 1998)

Papp, L.: In memoriam Dr. Ferenc Mihályi (1906-1997)

order to study mosquito problems around Lake Balaton. The field work was mainly done by ÁRPÁD SOÓS and FERENC MIHÁLYI. Their work was rich in results, and later study sites were extended to the Danube inundation areas and also to other parts of Hungary. On the 10th of June 1952 ÁRPÁD SOÓS was generous enough to offer him a change of position to the Collection of Diptera (from that time ÁRPÁD SOÓS was the curator of the Collection of Rhynchota). The Collection of Diptera was founded and curated from 1896 to his death in 1922 by KÁLMÁN KERTÉSZ, one of the founders of Hungarian entomology (and also its Society). The collection he left to the followers was large and invaluable (c. 250,000 specimens with c. 5,000 primary types; the former estimate must be a good one, the latter is much questionable). Unfortunately, his successor, ZOLTÁN SziLÁDY performed poorly as a curator (officially from 1923 to 1936), and so KERTÉSZ'S collection agonized slowly and got covered with dust. ÁRPÁD SOÓS took over the curatorship around 1940 (he was an unpaid assistant in the Zoological Department between 1936 and 1940, but he worked mainly in the Department of General Zoology of the Budapest Un versify, where he was an unpaid assistant between 1935 and 1939). SOUS made the collection clean and set up all the named material into a fine museum order until about 1950. It was ÁRPÁD SOÓS who managed to get and transfer the remains of the collection of JÁNOS THALHAMMER into the Hungarian Natural History Museum. FERENC MIHÁLYI embarked on various scientific activities in the Collection of Diptera with much enthusiasm, particularly for the culicids and the species of Syrphidae in Hungary. He published the booklet for Culicidae in the series of Fauna Hungáriáé in 1955. He gained the scientific degree "Candidate of Science" from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1955 for his thesis about the culicid mosquitoes of Hungary. In the days after the 4th of November 1956, the Soviet artillery cannonaded Budapest almost without any concrete aiming but to punish that wicked city. That was why also the building of the Zoological Department was hit by several shells, although there were no Hungarian fighters in or around. The building caught fire, including the collections in alcohol and it was burning for days. Among all the large and invaluable collections, four-fifth of the Collection of Diptera and all its library were annihilated. The years after the big fire were the time of a heroic struggle for FERENC MIHÁLYI to rebuild the collection. He and his assistant worked day and night collecting, selecting and mounting flies in all parts of the country. Other workers of the Zoological Department collected also flies in remarkable numbers; the donations the Department got from abroad were not high in numbers but vitally important as named materials for comparison. Although such a work to collect flies, to select them into families, etc. cannot be profitable in terms of writing of scientific papers, not much later he began to make good scientific papers and books. In 1963 the summary of his great work on Hungarian culicids was published in a fine book (co-authored by M. SZTANKAY-GULYÁS), he collected, reared and published also on fruit flies (Tephritidae). Later he studied the synanthropic flies intensively again. He made intensive collectings in 1959-1963 and he presented his thesis "Magyarország szinantrop légyfaunájának taxonómiai és ökológiai vizsgálata" [Taxonomical and ecological investigations on the synanthropic dipterous fauna of Hun-