Matskási István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 96. (Budapest 2004)

Korsós, Z. ; Vörös, J.: In memoriam Dr. Olivér György Dely (1927-2003)

This is especially painful for the senior author of the present obituary, since the deceased had been supervisor of his dissertations for his university and the doctoral degrees, his first mentor in the museum, and the one who introduced him into the science of herpetology. OLIVÉR DELY has handed over not only the professional bases, the qualities of modesty, correctness and objectivity which are needed to be a scientist, but has also shown an example to follow in honesty and strength of being a character. He had an exceptionally wide education, and with his far-reaching trains of thought, long afternoon talks, almost speeches provided such a picture of a hard, already vanished epoch which we will never forget. OLIVÉR GYÖRGY DELY was born on the 27th of April, 1927, in Nagyszalonta (Salonta, today in County Bihor, Romania). His loving addiction to his homeland, Transylvania, accompanied him during the entire life. He lost his father, GÉZA DELY, at the age of 7, whose influence to his life, however, was determining. His mother, MÁRIA BAJOR, a retired schoolteacher brought up the two brothers, ALAJOS (later a dermatologist doctor) and OLIVÉR with hard work. There were also two important friends, his uncle, ANDOR DELY, and the Trianon diplomat, IVÁN PRAZNOVSZKY, who partly replaced his father. As a result of the support of the entire family, the two boys both became well-known, educated persons, and found their place in the world. He studied in the schools of Nagyvárad (= Oradea) and Nagyszalonta (= Salonta), but World War Two broke his studies with a short captivity in a Russian prison camp during his military service. He passed his final examinations already in a Budapest secondary school in 1946. In the same year he started to study museology at the Faculty of Arts of the Péter Pázmány (later Budapest) University, where he graduated in 1950. He began to work in the herpetological collection of the Department of Zoology, Hungarian Natural History Museum (HNHM), Budapest. At that time, there were two herpetologists in the museum from whom DELY could learn: Mrs ARANKA MÁRIA FEJÉRVÁRY-LÁNGH was curator of the collection, and ISTVÁN BOROS was director-general. The latter, having studied in the Soviet Union, was a faithful communist, relating to other people with great humanity. Later DELY and BOROS co-authored three papers together on the greatest scientists of Hungarian herpetology (LAJOS MÉHELY, GÉZA GYULA FEJÉRVÁRY, and ISTVÁN BOLKAY). OLIVÉR DELY became senior curator for the herpetological collection in 1952, and remained so eventually until the end of his life. The fall of 1956 brought a political revolution to Hungary, when during the Budapest confrontations between Hungarian revolutionists and the Russian troops resulted in a tragic attack fighting the National Museum, and later the Department of Zoology of the HNHM. In the big fire caused by a shell, almost the entire herpetological collection was destroyed, more than 40 thousand specimens preserved in al-