Ferdinand Stoliczka

Ferdinand Stoliczka ( born June 7, 1838 in High Walt / Bílany, today Kroměříž, Moravia, † June 19, 1874 at the Indian village on the banks of Murghi Shayok River in the Ladakh region ) was an Austrian Asia, botanist, zoologist, geologist, surveyor and paleontologist. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Stoliczka ".

Life

After completing his studies, he worked for several years at the kk Imperial Geological Institute in Vienna, invented in 1862 before he joined the British ' Geological Survey of India " and there was a paleontologist.

Between 1864 and 1866 he undertook on his own several research trips geological and paleontological content of the Himalayas and to Tibet, where he conducted petrographic studies, meteorological observations hired and rocks, fossils, plants and mammals collected.

In 1873 he undertook his last, the 3rd Himalayan expedition attend the Second Yarkand Mission of Thomas Douglas Forsyth. He accompanied Forsyth at its diplomatic mission to Kashgar, where he succeeded, with the Emir Jakub Chan conclude an advantageous contract for the British Empire, while the naturalist in its wake (next Stoliczka for example, Bellew, Gordon, Chapman, Trotter and Biddulph ) were able to gain valuable insights into Central Asia and Turkestan and then followed Colonel Gordon across the Pamirs after Wakhan and back. On the march Stoliczka ill with pneumonia and died at Murghi on the banks of Shayok in today's Indian district Ladakh.

Forsyth published in his Report of a mission to Yarkund in 1873 ... posthumously several posts by Stoliczka that dealt with some expedition obtained results. We call it today as the founder of systematic geological exploration of the Himalayas. At the request of the Indian government an obelisk with a signature panel on a two-stage pedestal was establishes by the administration in Leh Ladakh in honor of the crashed researcher in 1876 and has since been visited by Himalayan researchers speak as a place of pilgrimage.