Born in Constanţa, near the Black Sea, Nalbant spent some of his childhood among fishermen in the Danube Delta.
[1] After finishing high school, he studied biology, first in Cluj, and then at the University of Bucharest.
[1] While in Cluj, Nalbant befriended Petre Mihai Bănărescu, who would become a collaborator on many publications.
[1] He worked at the Grigore Antipa National Museum of Natural History and participated in numerous expeditions to regions of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.
[1] Taxa named for Nalbant include genus Nalbantichtys (Schultz, 1967), subgenus Nalbantius (Mauge and Bauchot, 1984) and species Schistura nalbanti (Mîrza and Bănărescu, 1979) and Cyclaspis nalbanti (Petrescu, 1998).