We miss you, Koz.

By Megan Dethier
Gene Kozloff ("Koz"), Anne Kozloff, and Mary Rice at Koz's 75th birthday celebration at FHL. He's holding up a shirt with a Loriciferan which was hand-made especially for him.

A gentle FHL giant passed away on March 4, 2017, at the age of 96: Dr. Eugene N. Kozloff. Most FHL associates probably knew Koz from some point in their careers, and even those who never had the pleasure of interacting with him probably knew of him through his books. Kozloff was a Renaissance man with encyclopedic knowledge and boundless love of the natural world, and they broke the mold after they made him.

Koz/Gene was born in Tehran, Iran, where his father was serving in the Russian Army during World War I. His family immigrated to the United States in 1921, unable to return to their homeland after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Gene grew up in Riverside, California, where his lifelong love of animals and plants began. He married Anne Solomon in 1944, and the couple moved to Berkeley where Gene received his Master's and Doctoral degrees at the University of California. He then began a long career of impassioned and inspiring teaching — one of his lasting legacies. He taught at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon, and in 1953 won a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in Organismic Biology and Ecology. He started teaching at the University of Washington in the 1960s, and eventually taught courses both in Seattle and at FHL. He was resident Associate Director of the Friday Harbor Laboratories from 1966 to 1973. He and Richard Norris started what we now know as the ZooBot Program at FHL, which inspired many an undergraduate to continue in a career in marine science. He also spread his vast knowledge through his books, ranging in subject matter from his Keys to Marine Invertebrates — a real labor of love involving enormous detail and perfectionism — to his last book on terrestrial flora of the San Francisco Bay region.

ZooBot students at FHL in 2015 holding their textbooks, authored by Kozloff.

In between teaching and writing he also accomplished detailed study and publications on small and under-appreciated invertebrates, from parasites to flatworms. Students in his Invertebrate Zoology courses were some of the few anywhere who got to see kinorhynchs and orthonectids and other wild obscure critters. Koz would never just turn over a lab session to a TA because that was where the fun was: helping students find wonderful bits of nature and learn about them. Many of us became effective teachers inspired by Koz's style; he gave such engaging and organized lectures, and while talking he simultaneously drew on the board — with multiple colors of chalk — gorgeous diagrams of the animals du jour. Students worked to copy these diagrams into their notes, and by doing so learned far more than staring at a powerpoint on a screen. Koz was a demanding instructor, expecting others to match his commitment to and engagement with the subject; his most critical assessment of an under-performing undergraduate was to say that he or she was a “part-time student”. Kozloff was a Full-Time Teacher. It is thus especially appropriate that the Eugene N. Kozloff Endowed Fund at UW was established for scholarships for undergraduate students.

Koz, Anne Kozloff, and Megan Dethier.

Koz also taught outside the University setting, offering classes for the San Juan Nature Institute, the North Cascades Institute, the Skagit Master Gardeners, and others. He had diverse life-long hobbies: playing the viola da gamba, listening to opera, gardening with native plants, collecting stamps and art, and traveling. Even after moving to Anacortes with Anne in 2007 to be closer to their daughter Rae, Koz kept working on his beloved invertebrates as long as he could, based out of the Shannon Point Marine Center.

Personally, Koz was a true gentleman in every sense of the word. He had a graciousness that (sadly) we now think of as old-fashioned, but was at his very core. If he ever said something that sounded rude or abrupt, you just had to look closely and you’d see the twinkle in his eye that meant he was just exercising his wicked sense of humor. We miss it all.

If you'd like to help honor Koz, you can give to the Eugene N. Kozloff Endowed Fund for Undergraduate Student Support, and/or join us for a potluck gathering in his honor in the FHL Commons this summer, Sat July 29th, 3pm-6.