Imre Frivaldszky

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Imre Frivaldszky, also known as Emerich Frivaldszky von Frivald, was a Hungarian botanist and entomologist who lived from 1799 to 1870. He was born on 6 February 1799 in Bacskó, Hungary (now Bačkov, Slovakia) and died on 19 October 1870 in Jobbágyi, Hungary.

Frivaldszky studied at the gymnasiums in Sátoraljaújhely and Eger, studied philosophy at the Royal Academy of Kassa, and earned his medical degree at the University of Budapest in 1823. While still a student, he joined botanical trips with Pál Kitaibel and Jószef Sadler. He started work at the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest in 1822 as an assistant curator and later became curator until his retirement in 1851. In 1824 he left medicine to devote himself to botany and zoology. He traveled widely to collect specimens across Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Italy. He published a dried-plant specimen series called Species plantarum exsiccatarum europaea-turcicarum and wrote extensively on plants, snakes, snails, and especially insects such as butterflies and beetles. Much of his entomological collection was destroyed by a flood in 1838, and the rest was lost in 1956 during political upheaval. Some of his specimens are kept at the Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa. His nephew János Frivaldszky also became an entomologist and later the curator at the Hungarian National Museum.