Võ Quý (1 Viewer)

End note for Võ Quý – Father of Vietnam's environmental Conservation Movement a k a “Professor Bird (Giáo sư Chim)” ... R.I.P.

Võ Quý (1929–2017), Vietnamese zoologist, environmentalist, Professor at the Vietnam National University, in Hanoi, etc., etc. ... passed away 10th of January 2017.

Supposed to be commemorated in the invalid "Coracina melaschistos quyi" DAO VAN THIEN 1961 (OD* unseen, by me) [syn. Coracina melaschistos saturata SWINHOE 1870]

Obituary published in The New York Times, the day after he passed away, here. Also already noted in, for example; English Wiki, here, French Wiki, here, and (of course) in the Vietnamese Wiki, here. More info on him; here or here.

/B

PS. Note that he (by us Westerners) often is refered to as "Vo Quy" (without the proper tilde and accent), sometimes also is referred to as "M. Vo Quy" which I assume is equal of Monsieur (Mr.) Võ Quý, as Vietnam was Part of French Indochina until 1954.
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*Dao Van Tien. 1961. Recherches zoologiques dans la région de Thai-Nguyen (Nord-Vietnam). Zoologischer Anzeiger 166: 298-308.

Hallo Björn,
Your topic on "Professor Bird" Võ Quý delivered a personal memory for me. After reading it I had the idea of submitting a picture of the "Danh luc Chim Viêt Nam" = Checklist of the Birds of Vietnam (1995), which Võ Quý and Nguyen Cu had composed and which shows the famous Vietnamese pheasant Lophura hatinhensis on the cover, described by him in 1964; but I have only a photocopy (and the picture is poor in quality). At the last full day of our bird trip in Vietnam, on 11 December 1998, our Dutch group had a short meeting with "giao su voi nu cuoi", the "professor with the smile", in the Faculty of Natural History of Hanoi University, in a room full of cupboards with prepared butterflies and beetles. (Afterwards we had a look at the bird vitrines). Võ Quý, a modest and amiable man, was the mentor of a young ornithologist, who had been our bird guide during the trip. The professor gave us a talk about his activities, especially on the task and importance of information and education to the public, his compatriots. He did not hand us the checklist, but we received a booklet (text in Vietnamese and English) on the Cuc Phuong National Park, of which he had been one of the authors in 1996.
It is rather long ago now, but I keep it as a valuable memory, a real bonus to such a birding tour, so I chose to share it with you and other BirdForum readers. Anyway, if someone needs a Vietnamese name of a bird from that country, I can afford it; explaining such a name is a different matter. The Vietnamese Pheasant is called Gà lôi lam duôi tráng, or Gà lùng (in which Gà lôi stands for all Lophura species).
Enjoy,
Jan van der Brugge

Jan, thanks for sharing that memory. Sounds truly memorable.

I´ll do the job for you; cover of the 1995 Checklist ... attached.
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