Joseph Rock
Joseph Francis Charles Rock, (1884 – 1962) was an Austrian-American explorer, geographer, linguist and botanist.
He was born in Vienna, Austria but moved to Honolulu, Hawaii in 1907, where he became an authority on the flora of these islands.
In the period 1922-1949 he spent most of his time studying the flora, peoples and languages of southwest China, mainly in Yunnan, Sichuan, southwest Gansu and eastern Tibet. Many Asian plants that he collected can be seen in the Arnold Arboretum.
He was based near Lijiang in the village of Nguluko, (Yuhu), and wrote many articles for the National Geographic magazine about his expeditions to places such as Muli, Minya Konka (Gongga Shan), the three sacred peaks of Shenrezig, Jambeyang and Chanadorje in what is now known as Yading Nature Reserve, and the Salween (Nujiang) river. These articles brought him modest fame, and were said to have inspired the novel Lost Horizon, by James Hilton, about a remote Himalayan community known as Shangri-La.
After 1949 he returned to Honolulu where he died in 1962.
Works and memory
Among the plants he discovered is the spectacular Rock's Peony Paeonia rockii, and many new rhododendrons. The standard botanical author abbreviation Rock is applied to species he described.
He also produced a 1,094-page dictionary and two histories of the Nakhi people and language of northwestern Yunnan.
See also
- Gongga Shan, a mountain in Sichuan which (due to poor measuring equipment) he erroneously thought for a time to be the highest in the world.