Mirko Malez
Mirko Malez (November 5, 1924 – August 23, 1990) was a prominent Croatian palaeontologist, speleologist, geo-scientist, ecologist and natural history writer. He was known as a "pioneer of Croatian speleoarchaeology". He was a member of the Yugoslav Academy, JAZU (present-day Croatian, HAZU - Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts and one of only four Croatian PhDs of speleology (Josip Poljak 1922, Mirko Malez 1963, Srećko Božičević 1985, and Mladen Garašić 1986). Thanks to Malez's popularization of science, Varaždin County, in northern Croatia, is also known as a "cradle of the Palaeolithic age". In his honor four new species were named: Dalmatichthys malezi (Radovčić 1975), Ilyocypris malezi (Sokač 1978), Mimomys malezi (Rabeder 1983) and Vaccinites malezi (Slišković 1991). Most of his papers and research interests were directed towards fossil mammals of the Pleistocene and the paleontological processing of certain species, determining their taxonomy, migrations and palaeogeography. Early life Malez was born to a large family in the small town of Ivanec, in northwestern Croatia on 5 November 1924, at his family home. He was the first of six children of a local barber and amateur photographer Slavko Malez, and Matilda Malez (née Polak). He finished elementary school in 1939. In the