Joseph Rock

Joseph Francis Charles Rock (1884 – 1962) was an Austrian-American botanist, explorer, geographer, linguist, ethnographer and photographer. Life Josef Franz Karl Rock was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of a steward of a Polish count. As a result of a generally unhappy childhood and his father's determination that he become a priest, Rock set off on a wandering life in late adolescence. After a few precarious years traveling around Europe, he emigrated to the United States in 1905. He eventually ended up in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1907, where he would remain for 13 years. Although Rock had no tertiary education, a fact about which he was sensitive and often dissembled, he had a remarkable capability for foreign languages; by the time he reached Hawaii he had a reasonable command of more than half a dozen, including Chinese. Hawaii (1907-1920) Initially Rock taught Latin and natural history at Mills College (now known as Mid-Pacific Institute). With little formal background in the latter subject, he quickly trained himself as a botanist and became the leading authority on Hawaiian flora. Despite his lack of credentials, in 1908 he talked himself into a job to develop the first herbarium in Hawaii for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, collecting enormous numbers of plants from his explorations around the islands. In 1911, the herbarium was transferred to the College of Hawaii (later the University of Hawaii) with Rock as its first curator and the Territory of Hawaii's first official botanist. During his time in Hawaii, Rock produced dozens of scholarly articles and five books, among which Indigenous Trees of the Hawaiian Islands (1913), in particular, is considered a classic work in its field. In 1913 Rock was part of a small expedition to the remote Palmyra Atoll, which resulted in the publication of a comprehensive description of its flora.