Walter Norman Koelz was a zoologist, natural history and artefact collector. He collected an almost equal number of bird and plant specimens, as well as anthropological artefacts, but his written output concentrated on ornithology.
Koelz was born in Waterloo, Michigan, on September 11, 1895. He received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Michigan in 1920 and in 1925 joined the McMillan Expedition to the American Arctic. He then undertook studies of whitefishes while working for the University of Michigan at the U.S. Institute for Fisheries Research. During his time with the Bureau of Fisheries he was offered a post as a botanist with the Himalayan Research Institute of the Roerich Museum, based in Naggar, Himachal Pradesh. Accepting the post, he arrived in the Kullu Valley in May 1930, ready to begin botanical explorations.
After a year-and-a-half Koelz left the Roerich post and returned to Michigan in 1932. He had now developed a strong interest in Tibetan culture, leading to his appointment as Research Fellow with the Charles L. Freer Fund in September that year. During the summer of 1933 he returned to Indian Tibet to collect material for the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology, gathering a great number of artefacts on this journey.
Koelz's days of botanical collecting were not over, however, for in 1936 he travelled once more to India, this time as a plant explorer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1939 he went on to embark on his most ambitious journey, a seven-year expedition through Persia, Nepal, Assam and other parts of India. His Persian Diary, 1939-1941 has been published by the Michigan Museum of Anthropology.
In 1956 Koelz was awarded the Meyer Memorial Award for outstanding contributions to agriculture, such as bringing disease resistant strains of melon from Calcutta to the U.S. In all he amassed some 30,000 plant specimens and 30,000 bird specimens for the University of Michigan. After many years spent travelling the world Koelz returned to live in the house in which he was born. He died there on 24 September 1989.
