Joseph Rock

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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.

From 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.

[edit] Works and memory

Among the plants he discovered is the spectacular Rock's Peony Paeonia rockii, and many new rhododendrons.

Rock also produced a 1,094-page dictionary and two histories of the Nakhi (Naxi) people and language of northwestern Yunnan, which have been widely used for the study of Nakhi culture, language and religion. The most important of his written works are:

• The Ancient Nakhi Kingdom of Southwest China. Cambridge, Mass. 1948.
• A Nakhi-English encyclopedic dictionary. I.M.E.O. Rome. 1963.

[edit] 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.

[edit] External links

• Harvard University papers on Joseph Rock
• Rock's contribution to the study of the Naxi language
• In the footsteps of Joseph Rock: a photoblog
• Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation: Joseph Rock