December 18, 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Ilya Sergeevich Darevsky, a leading Russian herpetologist, founder and first President of the A.M. Nikolsky Herpetological Society, long-term head of the Herpetology Department of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His life, numerous achievements, and contribution to world herpetological science are described in detail in articles and a book dedicated to him (Ananyeva N.B., Doronin I.V. Ilya Sergeevich Darevsky: Portrait of a Herpetologist. Photo Album. St. Petersburg: ZIN RAS. 2015. 103 p.). Darevsky was a recognized leader of Soviet and Russian herpetological science. He is credited with a world-scale discovery - the phenomenon of parthenogenesis in lizards. He is the author of 466 publications, and 31 animal species are named in his honor. Ilya Sergeevich was the scientific supervisor of 29 candidates of science.
Fig: Darevsky's mabuya (Eutropis darevskii Bobrov, 1992) is a skink lizard found in the Son La Province and described by the author of the article as a species new to science.
Separately, it is necessary to talk about the contribution of I.S. Darevsky to the knowledge of the herpetofauna of Vietnam. In total, he took 13 expedition trips to this country from 1982 to 1996. He published 37 articles devoted to Vietnam, described one new genus of lizards and 18 new species of reptiles. In recognition of his merits in the study of the herpetofauna of Vietnam, two Vietnamese species of lizards, as well as several species of insects, were named after him. Two of Darevsky's students defended their PhD dissertations under his scientific supervision on various representatives of the herpetofauna of Vietnam: V.V. Bobrov on lizards and N.L. Orlov on amphibians. Ilya Sergeevich laid a powerful foundation for the study of the herpetofauna of Vietnam. Already in our time, herpetological research within the Russian-Vietnamese Tropical Center in this country is developing intensively, which made the Vietnamese herpetofauna the most studied in Southeast Asia.
An article devoted to the description of I.S. Darevsky's contribution to the knowledge of the herpetofauna of Vietnam was published in the journal "Vietnamese Studies" (WoS, Q3): Bobrov V.V. On the 100th anniversary of I.S. Darevsky - the first Russian researcher of the herpetofauna of Vietnam // Vietnamese Studies. 2025. Vol. 9. No. 1. P. 158-161. DOI: 10/54631/VS.2025.91-677686