1884-1962

American naturalist and explorer of Tibet and China. Trained as a botanist, he also worked as an anthropologist, linguist, and philologist. Beginning in 1924, he explored northwest China and Tibet, observing local customs and collecting plant material for the Arnold Arboretum and ornithological specimens for the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. In 1929 Minya Konka and Amne Machin, two peaks along the border of China and Tibet, were incorrectly measured by him to be 30,000 feet (9,144 m).