Emerich Frivaldszky von Frivald (6 February 1799 – 19 October 1870), known as Imre Frivaldszky, was a Hungarian

botanist Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

and

entomologist Entomology (from Ancient Greek ἔντομον (''éntomon''), meaning "insect", and -logy from λόγος (''lógos''), meaning "study") is the branch of zoology that focuses on insects. Those who study entomology are known as entomologists. In ...

Biography

Born into a family of landed gentry, Frivaldszky studied at the gymnasiums in Sátoraljaújhely and Eger, then philosophy at the Royal Academy of Kassa. He graduated in medicine from the University of Budapest in 1823. While still a student in Eger he accompanied Pál Kitaibel and Jószef Sadler on botanical excursions. By the time he graduated in medicine he was already assistant curator at the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest in 1822, where he later served as curator until his retirement in 1851. In 1824 he abandoned the practice of medicine and spent the rest of his life as a botanist and zoologist. He made many collecting trips throughout

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...

and Italy. Frivaldszky issued and distributed the

exsiccata Exsiccata (Latin, ''gen.'' -ae, ''plur.'' -ae) is a work with "published, uniform, numbered set of preserved specimens distributed with printed labels". Typically, exsiccatae are numbered collections of dried herbarium Biological specimen, spe ...

-like series ''Species plantarum exsiccatarum europaea-turcicarum''. Frivaldszky wrote extensively on plants, snakes, snails and especially insects (

Lepidoptera Lepidoptera ( ) or lepidopterans is an order (biology), order of winged insects which includes butterflies and moths. About 180,000 species of the Lepidoptera have been described, representing 10% of the total described species of living organ ...

and Coleoptera). A large part of his huge entomological collection was destroyed in a flood in 1838, the rest in 1956 during the anticommunist revolution. Many of his specimens are in the Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa. His nephew János Frivaldszky also became an entomologist and curator at the Hungarian National Museum.

Notes

* ''This article includes material from the Slovak and Hungarian Wikipedia.''

References

External links

Frivaldszky family website

Obituary in the Österreichische botanische Zeitschrift, 1870

Bálint Zs. and S Abadjev: ''An annotated list of Imre Frivaldszky’s publications''. Annales Historico-Naturales Musei Naturalis Hungarici 98:185, 2006
{{DEFAULTSORT:Frivaldszky, Imre 1799 births 1870 deaths People from Trebišov District Botanists with author abbreviations Botanists from the Austrian Empire 19th-century Hungarian botanists Entomologists Lepidopterists Pteridologists Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zoologists from the Austrian Empire