Arthur de Carle Sowerby

Arthur de Carle Sowerby (8 July 1885 – 16 August 1954; Chinese: 苏柯仁; pinyin: Sū Ke Ren) was a British naturalist, explorer, writer, and publisher in China. His father was Arthur Sowerby (15 October 1857 – 27 June 1934; Chinese: 苏道味; pinyin: Sū Dao Wei).

Background

Arthur Sowerby was the son of a Christian missionary in China, the Reverend Arthur Sowerby, and Louisa Clayton. He was also the great-great-grandson of James Sowerby the botanist and founder of the Geological Society. From 1881, Arthur's parents were based at the Baptist Missionary Society mission station in Shanxi. The Sowerby family was on furlough in England at the time of the 1900 Boxer Rebellion during which many of their friends and colleagues at their Shanxi mission station were massacred.

Education

Sowerby attended Bristol University studying for a BSc in Science but dropped out and returned to China where he was appointed lecturer and curator of the Anglo-Chinese College in Tianjin.

Expeditions

Sowerby joined the Duke of Bedford’s 1906 Mission to collect zoological specimens in Shaanxi for the British Museum during which time he discovered a new species of Jerboa which was subsequently named after him: Dipus sagitta sowerby.

Sowerby was taken on as a naturalist for Robert Sterling Clark's Expedition of 1909 which sought specimens from the Yellow River into Shaanxi and then to Gansu province and made the first map of a little-known area of China. Clarke and Sowerby later published a book about the expedition entitled Through Shên-kan: the account of the Clark expedition in north China, 1908-9. Sowerby married Mary Ann Mesny in 1909, but she was to die just 5 years later.