Reginald Koettlitz was born in Ostend but moved to England as a child and qualified at Guy's Hospital. He was a general practitioner in County Durham for eight years before serving as doctor and geologist to the Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition to Franz-Josef Land in 1894-97. Thereafter he made further expeditions to Somaliland, Abyssinia and the Amazon before joining Captain Scott's Discovery Expedition to the Antarctic in 1901-04 as surgeon and botanist. After the expedition he emigrated to South Africa, where he worked as a general practitioner, dying in 1916.