Sandor Lovassy

* Abony, October 28, 1855 – † Keszthely, July 8, 1946 / ornithologist, fauna researcher, teacher at the Nagyrőce middle school ; ; He began his secondary school studies in Baja, then continued at the Ref. College in Debrecen, where he also made ornithological observations under the guidance of his natural history teacher. After graduating from high school, he studied at the National Institute of Economics in Pallag and obtained a diploma in economics in 1874. On the recommendation of his professor, Imre Dininger, he enrolled in the Faculty of Humanities of the Budapest University of Science and Technology. He completed his university studies in 1878 and received a secondary school teacher's diploma in natural history, chemistry and geography. While still a university student, he was appointed a teacher in Nagyrőce, Gömör County. He taught there for 13 years, during which he received his doctorate (1884) and reported in numerous articles on his observations of the bird fauna of the highlands and the birdlife of the Ecsedi bog. In 1889 he was invited to Keszthely, at the Hungarian Royal Agricultural Institute, as a teacher, where he taught economic zoology, botany, plant pathology, physiology, mineralogy and bacteriology. He organised and set up the collections of the Department of Natural History, established a botanical garden and also ran the meteorological station. His interest soon turned to the rich fauna of Lake Balaton, Lake Balaton and the Keszthely Mountains, which provided an inexhaustible source for his further research. He also carried out significant public activity, and from 1892 he was the responsible editor of the Keszthelyi Hírlap. In 1898, the Balaton Museum Association was founded on his initiative and later the Balaton Museum, which he also took on as its director. In 1916, the Ministry of Agriculture entrusted him with the duties of director of the Academy of Economics. He remained in this position until his retirement in 1921. The most significant work of his work is Vertebrate Animals of Hungary and Their Economic Aspects (1927). In this book, which served as a textbook for a long time, he summarized his own observations. He also experimented with planting tropical nymphaea on Lake Hévíz, and as a result, the Indian red nymphaea (Nymhaea rubra Roxb.) still blooms in the lake today. In addition to the practical results of his naturalization work, he also made a botanical discovery: he described a new large-flowered subspecies of nymphaea (Nymhaea rubra ssp. longiflora 1908). Many of his works remain in manuscript form. ; ; His main works: ; Data on the bird fauna of Gömör county, 1883, ; Geography of the Murány–Nagyrőce section of the Murány Valley, 1884, ; Catalogue of the Hungarian egg and nest collection of the ornithological exhibition (Keszthely), 1891, ; Tropical nymphs of Hévíz in Keszthely (In: Results of the scientific study of Lake Balaton, vol. 2), 1908, ; The last decades of the existence of the Ecsedi bog and its birdlife, 1931.