Richard Helms (1842 - 1914), by unknown photographer, courtesy of State Library of New South Wales. GPO 1 - 15766. .Image Details

HELMS, RICHARD (1842-1914), zoologist and botanist, was born on 12 December 1842 at Altona, Hanover, Germany, son of Frederick Helms, Lutheran minister, and his wife Caroline. He migrated in 1858 to Melbourne where he worked for a tobacconist. In 1862 he moved to Dunedin where he turned to dentistry and later to watchmaking. Fluctuating between Australia and New Zealand, he extended his extraordinary versatility to zoology. Although self-taught, he became so zealous as a collector that many new species of New Zealand insects and a number of shells were named after him.

In 1888 Helms became a collector for the Australian Museum in Sydney. He worked first in the Snowy Mountains. From Jindabyne in February 1889 he wrote to Edward Ramsay, curator of the museum, that riding, walking and collecting ...

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Source:

Australian Dictionary of Biography