Joseph Rock
Joseph Francis skirt (actually Joseph Franz Karl skirt, born January 13, 1884 in Vienna, † December 5, 1962 in Honolulu, Hawaii) was an Austrian-American explorer, geographer, linguist and botanist. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Rock".
Biography
1902, rock his first book, a German - Chinese encyclopedia. A tuberculosis disease forced him in 1907 to a relocation to Hawaii, where he was an expert on the local flora and example as the first genus Hibiscadelphus discovered and described. Between 1909 and 1920 he published over 40 articles on newly discovered plant species in Hawaii.
In 1921 he went for the first time on behalf of the Smithsonian Institution to China; from there took him several research trips to Asia, first to Burma and then 1922-1949 to China, where he spent most of his time, the flora, the people and languages in southwestern China, mainly in Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu and to study eastern Tibet. Expeditions took him to Muli, Mount Gongga Shan, the three sacred mountains Shenrezig, Jambeyang and Chanadorje and the Salween River. About 10,000 plants he collected in 27 years, the Arnold Arboretum ( Herbarium and Botanical Garden of Harvard University in Massachusetts ) are still being cultivated or are preserved as herbarium specimens. Rock lived at this time in Nguluko ( Yuhu ), a village near Lijiang, where his former home is now a museum. About his experiences, he wrote articles in National Geographic Magazine, alleged to have served the novelist James Hilton as an inspiration for his novel Lost Horizon.
In August 1949 he moved back to Honolulu, where he died in 1962 of a myocardial infarction.
Effect
Rock is considered one of the most renowned researchers of Hawaiian and Chinese flora. The plant genus Rockia Heimerl (now assigned to the genus Pisonia ) from the family of magic flowers plants ( Nyctaginaceae ) has been named after him.
His treatises on the Naxi kingdom and the establishment of an extensive library in Lijiang are invaluable for linguist and ethnologist. In 1963 a 1094 -page dictionary of the language of the Naxi.
Works
- The indigenous trees of the Hawaiian Islands. In 1913.
- A mono- graphic study of the Hawaiian species of the tribe Lobelioideae, family Campanulaceae. Honolulu 1919
- The Amnye Ma - Chhen range and Adjacent regions. Roma 1956
- Expedition to Amnye Machhen in Southwest China in 1926 in the Mirror of diaries and letters. Edited by Hartmut Walravens. Wiesbaden 2003. ISBN 3-447-04635- X
- Phytogeography of North West and South West China Edited by Hartmut Walravens. 2010