Yakov Yakovlevich Walts was born in Kiev in 1841. In 1861, he graduated from Kiev University and received a candidate degree in biology for his diploma work "History of the Development of Ferns from the Growth of Spores to the Procreation of First Fronds". From 1861 to 1863, he was a scholar at Kiev Teachers' Training School. In 1863, at Kiev University, he defended his Master's thesis "On Unobsolete Germ of Aspidium filix-mas Roth". After this defence, from 1863 to 1865, he was sent on an assignment abroad to prepare for the professorial status. He worked in different laboratories, attended lectures and simultaneously investigated the structure of vascular bundle in ferns, the development of the prothallium in Godetia, algae of the genera Hydrurus and Batrachospermum, and a fungus of the genus Myzocitium which occurs in cells of Spirogyra. At De Bary's laboratory he wrote his doctoral thesis "Morphology and Taxonomy of the Genus Vaucheria DC." which he defended in 1865. From 1868 to 1871 he worked as a senior lecturer, then as a professor extraordinary at the Chair of Botany of Kiev University. At that time Y.Y. Walts studied Oomycetes, in particular the Saprolegniales, and devoted a paper to them published in 1870. Along with A.S. Rogovich and L.A. Rishavi he collected specimens of fungi from different systematic groups and, in 1871, published a list of fungi and slime moulds. From 1871 to 1881, he worked at the university of Novorossiysk [now Odesa, Ukraine], first as an ordinary professor and then as head of the Chair of Botany and Dean of Physics & Mathematics. At that period he published lectures on fungal diseases of cultivated plants (1873) and worked on ontogenesis of algae and fungi, being a pioneer of this scientific research in the Russian Empire. V.A. Rotert called one of the species of Vaucheria in his honour. Ya.Ya. Walts died on 29 November 1904 at Udelnaya station near St Petersburg.

Lists. Taxa. Kirk & Ansell form of name: J. Walz.