Loksa Imre (1923–1992), born one hundred years ago

Abstract

On the 1067th session of the Zoological Section of the Hungarian Biological Society we commemorated the 100th anniversary of the late Imre Loksa who had been an inexhaustible bearer of zoological knowledge for generations of university students and colleagues. He played a key role in the exploration on taxonomical and coenological knowledge of the soil fauna in Hungary. The considerable amount of Hungarian or exotic taxa, described by him, is still a reliable source for researchers on the field of taxonomy, systematics and biogeography.

Imre Loksa was born in Budapest in 1923. After his high school graduation he became a student of the Royal Hungarian Pázmány Péter University in Budapest, the predecessor of the Eötvös Loránd University, in biology and geography. His surname was spelled in the Almanach of the university as Lokscha during his student years. His career spanned a period full of considerable societal changes, and the huge contrasts were deepened by experiences as the tropical expeditions in the 1960s, organised by János Balogh and jointly financed by the UNESCO and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. But the image we keep on him still not depicts a traveller in the world, rather a quiet scientist travelling at least as many kilometres in Hungary as in abroad, also working profoundly in his room at his microscope and preparing needle-sharp, precise drawings.