Walter Koelz, Date of Birth, Date of Death

    

Walter Koelz

American zoologist and museum collector

Date of Birth: 11-Sep-1895

Date of Death: 24-Sep-1989

Profession: zoologist, ornithologist

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Virgo


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About Walter Koelz

  • Walter Norman Koelz (September 11, 1895, Waterloo, Michigan – September 24, 1989) was an American zoologist and museum collector. Walter Koelz's parents were immigrants from the Black Forest region of Germany, and his father was a village blacksmith in Waterloo.
  • Walter Koelz studied zoology and received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Michigan in 1920.
  • In 1925 he joined the McMillan Expedition to the American Arctic.
  • He also studied whitefishes during his work at the University of Michigan at the Institute for Fisheries Research.
  • He was offered a post with the Himalayan Research Institute of the Roerich Museum in 1930.
  • He visited Naggar in Kulu, in May 1930, to begin botanical explorations.
  • He returned to Michigan in 1932, but his interest in Tibetan culture led to his appointment as a Research Fellow on the Charles L.
  • Freer Fund in September 1932. In 1933 he returned to Indian Tibet to collect anthropology related material for the University of Michigan.
  • In 1936 Dr.
  • Koelz travelled once more to India to collect plants.
  • For seven years from 1939 he explored Persia, Nepal, and parts of India including Assam and made a large collection of birds.
  • In 1956 he was awarded the Meyer Memorial Award for outstanding contributions to the world of Agriculture.
  • He found and brought back a disease-resistant wild melon from Calcutta that helped save the California melon crop one year.
  • He had collected nearly 30,000 bird specimens for the University of Michigan's zoology museum and some 30,000 plants for the U.
  • of M.
  • herbarium. Koelz often described new subspecies often on the sole basis of assuming that the population was isolated.
  • Many of the subspecies of birds that he described from India are now invalid.
  • Of the fish Coregonus artedii which is found in lakes and consists of isolated populations he described no less than 24 subspecies.

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