After graduating from high school, he studied at the seminary in Szeged in 1951–52, then entered the Society of Jesus. On March 1, 1952, he was drafted into military service, which he completed as a MUSZOS in Mátyásföld, alongside Attila Miklósházy. In 1956, he left the country. He took his vows in Sankt Andrä, Austria, in 1957. He completed his philosophical studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where he earned a licentiate in philosophy in 1959. His superiors sent him to Canada to study theology, and he earned his STL and MA degrees in theology at Regis College in Toronto in 1963. He was ordained a priest in Toronto on June 16, 1963, by Archbishop Philip Pocock. He earned an MA in zoology from Oxford University in 1967, followed by a PhD in ecology from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 1972. He was considered an outstanding professor who was very approachable to his students. In 1996, he received the “Arts & Sciences Faculty Day Teaching Awards” from Fordham College at Rose Hill for his decades of service in the Department of Biological Sciences. Due to poor health, he was admitted to the infirmary at Murray-Weigel Hall in 2008. After a long illness, he died there on January 17, 2014. He was buried on January 21 at the Jesuit Cemetery in Auriesville, NY.

Aspects of the Anatomy of the Jelly Coat of Holopedium and Certain other Cladoceraus (Crustacia). New York, 1987. Írói neve: Martin Aloysius Hegyi