Miklos Udvardy

Who was Miklos Udvardy?

Miklos Dezso Ferenc Udvardy de Udvard et Básth was a Hungarian biologist and biogeographer. He was born on March 23, 1919 in Debrecen, Hungary to the noblemen Miklos Udvardy de Udvardy et Básth and Elizabeth Komlossy de Komlos. Despite an early interest in birds, his father encouraged him to study law, but later went on to earn a doctorate in biology from the University of Debrecen in 1942. His first position was as research biologist at the Tihanyi Biological Station on Lake Balaton in western Hungary.

Udvardy left Hungary in 1948, and secured a postdoctoral fellowship at Helsinki University in Finland with Professor P. Palmgren, an ornithologist and zoologist. He met his future wife Maud Bjorklund in 1950, and moved to Uppsala in Sweden. He was Curator of Marine Invertebrates at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm for a brief time.

Miklos and Maud married in 1951 and emigrated to Canada. Udvardy arrived at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1952 and was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Zoology in 1953, where he lectured in comparative anatomy and ornithology until 1966.