Acta Zoologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 67 (2), pp. 99–100, 2021

Title: In memoriam Prof. László Papp

Authors: László Peregovits¹ and Zoltán Soltész²

Authors' addresses: ¹Pars Ltd., H-2094 Nagykovácsi, Balta u. 11, Hungary; E-mail: perego.azh@gmail.com
²Lendület Ecosystem Services Research Group, Centre for Ecological Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, H-2163 Vácrátót, Alkotmány u. 2–4, Hungary; E-mail: soltesz@entomologia.hu

Abstract: On the 28th of March, 2021, we lost a remarkable friend and colleague. Prof. László Papp died at the age of 75, following a long and painful illness. He was born in 1946 in Aranyosgadány, a small village located in the southern part of Hungary. He graduated from the Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest as a research biologist, in 1970. A fruitful entomologist carrier had started in the Diptera collection of the Hungarian Natural History Museum (HNHM). Except for 5 years, he had been an employee of the museum until retirement in 2010; nevertheless, the tight connection with the collection lasted until his death. His Master’s degree and later his PhD thesis discussed the ecology of flies developing in cattle manure. In 1988, he defended his DSc thesis and soon after, he was elected corresponding, and in 1998, ordinary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The outstanding working capacity of the self-made man and steady worker manifested in his quantitative ecological studies with sample sizes of up to 100,000 specimens and in his collection building work. The Diptera collection counted 330,000 specimens when he became a curator and reached a million by the time he retired. This increase was the result of carefully sorted specimens out of the several millions collected. He discovered more than 2,000 Diptera species not known previously in Hungary. These results were summarised in the Checklist of the Diptera of Hungary (2001). He promised his colleagues that once he retired, he would revise the challenging family of Agromyzidae of Hungary. This was his final significant contribution, which was completed in 2019, and which included the four volumes of the Agromyzidae (Diptera) of Hungary. This was co-authored by Miloš Černý and published on 1,880 pages with 6,300 figures. Collecting activities not restricted to Hungary, he undertook collecting trips to Afghanistan, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, and South Africa, just to mention a few. He described five new families/sub-families, 97 new genera and 747 new species for science, authored 368 articles, book chapters and books, including three outstanding series, and co-editor and author of 13 volumes of the Catalogue of Palaearctic Diptera (1984–1993), a bold venture on 5,000 pages with 58 authors. Having to work with so many authors did not deter his interest for taking on more challenges. Together with Prof. Béla Darvas they launched the series of Contributions to a Manual of Palaearctic Diptera (1996–2000). Though it could not be fully completed, mostly because of a lack of specialists, the four published volumes on 3,000 pages by 84 authors became a milestone of old-world dipterology and a vital source for future generations of dipterists. His contribution to Hungarian higher education involved writing and editing zoology and zootaxonomy university textbooks. He was a lecturer and member of the PhD schools of several universities, supervising dozens of MSc and PhD students. He was the leader of the Ecological Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the HNHM. He was an active member of the Hungarian Entomological Society and founder of the Hungarian Parasitological Society and the Hungarian Association of Ecologists. Internationally, he was also a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society since 1991 and a committee member of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. Together with Prof. Béla Darvas, they launched the series of International Congress of Dipterology and organised its inaugural event in Budapest in 1986. Prof. László Papp was the engine behind the renewal of the Acta Zoologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, between 1994-1996 as editor-in-chief, later as an active member of the Editorial Advisers. His distinguished career was acknowledged several times. He received the Arnold Ipolyi Award from the National Scientific Foundation (OTKA) for promoting science, the Award for Hungarian Ecology, the governmental Széchenyi Award for outstanding scientific achievements and the Golden Medal of Imre Frivaldszky from the Hungarian Entomological Society, to mention a few. His death has been a tremendous loss for his beloved family, friends and colleagues, as well as for the international community of dipterists. May he rest in peace.

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