Stefan Negrea (1930 - 2019)

By Mihaela Ion

Stefan Negrea was a leading taxonomist and biospeleologist in Romania, working most of his career as a researcher at the "Emil Racovita" Institute of Speleology and leading the biospeleology department prior to his retirement. Alongside the other participants at the First International Congress of Myriapodology (Paris, France, 1968), Stefan Negrea was a contributor to the creation of CIM.

During his activity, he described 30 centipede species and subspecies, from Romania, Cuba, Spain and Israel, but he never abandoned cladocerans. Together with his wife Alexandrina Negrea (23 August 1930- 2 May 2011), he visited and researched over 200 caves in Romania, publishing not only taxonomy papers but also studies in the domains of speleology, ecology and zoogeography.

Many myriapodologists recall talking with him at various congresses and he remained very active even when he could no longer travel, willing to dive into the biology world, so he attended zoology congresses in Bucharest, his home town. His rich library is now a great support for biologist from the Institute of Speleology.