Joseph Francis Charles Rock (1884-1962) papers, 1922-1962.

Joseph Rock – botanist, anthropologist, explorer, linguist, and author – immigrated to the United States from his native Austria in 1905. From 1907 to 1920, Rock lived in Hawaii, where he became a self-taught specialist on the Hawaiian Flora. On the faculty of the College of Hawaii, Rock taught botany and published five books and numerous papers on the subject. From 1920 until 1949, he explored and collected in Asia for various United States institutions and agencies, such as: The National Geographic Society, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, and Harvard University. Several of Rock's travelogues were published in the National Geographic Magazine. Today, Rock’s contribution is still utilized by the scholarly community and best summarized by Tibetan and Himalayan Studies scholar Michael Aris in his book Lamas, Princes, and Brigands: Joseph Rock’s Photographs of the Tibetan Borderlands of China, 1992: “Rock’s real competence lay in the identification and collection of plants, the decipherment of the Naxi pictographs, and the compilation of maps — visual skills requiring enormous mental determination and physical stamina. His photographs, too, often taken under very difficult circumstances, provide eloquent testimony to his drive for classifiable visual evidence.”

Continuing a fifty-year Arnold Arboretum tradition of sending plant explorers to Asia, it was an elderly Charles S. Sargent (1841-1927), the first director of the Arnold Arboretum, who initiated Joseph Rock's expedition to northwestern China and northeastern Tibet in 1924. Seeking bird specimens from this area, the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology cooperated in the project, which lasted from 1924-27. Sargent's assignment to Rock was to collect plants and to photograph specimens along the Yellow River (Hwangho) and in the mountain ranges Amne Machin (Che-shih-shan) and the Richtofen (Chi-lien shan-mo). Rock also collected along the Yangtze River, the Kansu-Szechuan border, in the Tebbu region in southwestern Kansu, and around the Koki Nor Lake in northeastern Tibet.

On this 1924 expedition, Rock collected 20,000 herbarium specimens and many packages of propagative material. Although few new species were found, Rock lived up to Sargent's principal objective, which was to collect hardier forms of species that had already been collected by others farther south. The Arboretum distributed the seeds Rock collected to botanical and horticultural institutions in North America and in Europe. Rock also took numerous photographs and, independently, studied the cultures and languages of the local tribes. From 1927, Rock continued his work in China for various institutions. He was a research fellow at the Harvard Yenching Institute between 1945 and 1950, where he published his linguistic research.

In 1949, the political situation forced Rock's departure from China. In 1962, while living in Hawaii, a heart attack took the life of Joseph Rock, a world-renowned personality.

Sources: "J.F. Rock, 1884-1962" by Alvin K. Chock (Honolulu) Taxon 12 (3 (April 1963) p.89-102; Charles Sprague and the Arnold Arboretum by S. B. Sutton, Harvard University Press 1970, p.267-275; The Turbulent Career of Joseph Rock, botanist, explorer by S. B. Sutton, New York: Hastings House, 1974; Lamas, Princes, and Brigands: Joseph Rock's photographs of the Tibetan borderlands of China by Michael Aris, New York: China House Gallery, China Institute in America, 1992, pp.14-15. See also “Bodies Real and Virtual: Joseph Rock and Enrico Caruso in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands” by Erik Mueggler Comparative Studies in Society and History 2011;53(1):6–37.