Prof. Dr. Iosif Lepşi (1895-1966) – a zoologist, a geographer, and a museologist. Born in Rădăuţi, a town in Suceava County, Lepşi continued his high school and academic studies in Cernăuţi, graduating in 1921 from the Department of Sciences, Natural Sciences-Geography Section. The next ten years he spent as a teacher (and a principal) in Orăştie (Hunedoara County) and Cavarna (Caliacra County). In 1923, his fruitful research work won him a Ph.D. degree in Natural Sciences and Geography from the “Regele Ferdinand I” University in Cernăuţi. He continued his specialization at Natural Sciences museums in Berlin, Paris, London, Monaco. With the support of Grigore Antipa, Lepşi obtained a temporary job with the Fisheries Direction. In 1932, after having emerged the winner of a competition organized by the Department of Sciences in Iaşi, he was assigned the post of director at the National Museum of Natural History in Chişinău, which he held until 1944. There he discharged a vast activity of coordination and endowment of the institution, also founding research stations at Vîlcov (1938) and Manzîr (1943). Lepşi also laid the bases of biodiversity research, obtaining the legiferation of the first protected natural areas in Basarabia. The Chişinău museum was also the headquarters of “The Regional Commission of the Monuments of Nature in Basarabia” (1933-1944), chaired by Lepşi himself. Between 1936 and 1948, he was a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy of Sciences. After 1944 he worked as head of department at the “Grigore Antipa” Natural History Museum in Bucharest, subsequently being offered membership in the “Fauna Romîniei” working group. His 120 works in the fields of invertebrate zoology, limnology, hydrobiology and geography were published (many in German) in Romanian and foreign journals or in separate collections. Iosif Lepşi passed away in 1966.