Andrej Gogala

Andrej Gogala was born in Ljubljana on 30 November 1962 into a family of biologists. His father, Matija Gogala, was an entomologist and zoophysiologist, and his mother, Nada Gogala, was a plant physiologist.

From early childhood he had pronounced scoliosis, which doctors began to treat with braces and corsets. The treatment was broken off when, at the age of eleven, he suffered acute kidney failure as a result of food poisoning.

Following his parents, he became fascinated by the natural world and especially by insects. He studied biology at the Biotechnical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana, where he worked mainly on the taxonomy of Slovenian true bugs (Heteroptera). After graduating in 1987 he extended his interests to the Hymenoptera and completed a doctorate at the same faculty, supervised by Kazimir Tarman, with a faunistic, biogeographic and ecological analysis of the wild bees of Slovenia.

While working on his doctorate Gogala was employed as a young researcher at the Slovenian Museum of Natural History in Ljubljana. He remained at the museum for the rest of his career, working on the faunistics of Slovenian insects and eventually becoming a museum councillor in the department of invertebrates.

At the museum he created a study collection of bees and other Hymenoptera with more than 10,000 prepared specimens, and he organised several exhibitions, mostly photographic. For three decades he was an editor of the journal Acta Entomologica Slovenica.

Alone or with co-authors he wrote a number of popular and scientific books, including Insects: the success of numbers (1992), Stone, water, sun and wind: the nature of the Karst and Slovenian Istria (2003), a book on the Sečovlje Salina Nature Park (2004), Getting to know the salt pans (2008, with Iztok Škornik), Bees of Slovenia (2014), a book on bumblebees as important and threatened pollinators in Slovenia (2014, with co-authors) and a 2023 monograph on the Colletidae bees of Slovenia. He also wrote many specialist articles.

Gogala lived with the effects of his childhood illnesses throughout his life. In adulthood he returned to treating his scoliosis himself and documented the process in detail in a 2014 paper on correcting scoliosis in adulthood without surgery. He spoke about his life and work in a 2013 edition of the Radio Slovenija programme Podobe znanja and in a 2017 interview with the magazine Trdoživ.

Andrej Gogala died on Monday 26 October 2026, aged 63. His death was announced by his family through a notice published by the Vrhovec funeral service, which described him as a biologist, entomologist and retired museum councillor at the Slovenian Museum of Natural History. No cause of death was given.

His funeral was arranged for Friday 30 October 2026 at 15:00 at the cemetery at Log pri Brezovici, near Ljubljana. He was mourned by his father, his sister Jasna and her family, and other relatives.

Gogala's work, particularly Bees of Slovenia and his studies of individual bee families, gave Slovenia a modern account of its wild bee fauna at a time of growing concern about pollinators. His collection of more than 10,000 specimens remains part of the Slovenian Museum of Natural History, and his long editorship of Acta Entomologica Slovenica helped sustain the country's entomological publishing. The Slovene Entomological Society of Štefan Michieli recognised his contribution by making him an honorary member.