Kitti Thonglongya

He died suddenly from a massive heart attack, so the formal description was written by his British colleague, John E. Hill, who named the species in honour of its discoverer.

He went on to discover other new bat species, such as the extremely rare Salim Ali's fruit bat, Latidens salimalii, which had been misidentified in an Indian collection.

In the field of ornithology Kitti Thonglongya's best known discovery was of the white-eyed river martin, Pseudochelidon sirintarae, in 1969.

This large swallow, whose scientific name commemorates Princess Sirindhorn Thepratanasuda, was found wintering at a lake in central Thailand, but its breeding grounds are unknown.

The first two Thai specimens of the Mekong wagtail, Motacilla samveasna, were collected by Kitti Thonglongya in December 1972.