Miles Rock

Miles Rock (October 10, 1840 – January 29, 1901) was an American civil engineer, geologist and astronomer. He was part of the first graduating class of Lehigh University in 1869. He assisted Benjamin Apthorp Gould in the creation of the Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba in Argentina between 1870 and 1873. He worked on the Wheeler Survey which mapped parts of the western United States from 1878 to 1879 and as Chief of the Guatemala Boundary Commission from 1883 to 1898 which defined the disputed Guatemala–Mexico border.

Early life and education He was born in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, on October 10, 1840. He was the youngest of nine children. His father died when Rock was only five years old and he was raised by a Mennonite farmer. At age 14, he moved to Lancaster and worked in a book store. He attended the local public schools and Lancaster High School. and worked with Henry Sturgis Drinker to survey and map the Friedensville Zinc Mine in Center Valley, Pennsylvania. with a degree in civil engineering and worked as an instructor of math and mineralogy at Lehigh for one year after graduation. While there, Gould, Rock and others created the Uranometria Argentina, which formalized the southern astronomical constellations. from 1879 to 1883. In 1882, he participated in the observation of the Transit of Venus from Santiago, Chile.

Personal life In 1870, he married Susan Clarkson and together they had a son, Alfred Rock, and a daughter, Amy Cordoba Rock.

Publications Telegraphic Determination of Longitudes in Mexico and Central America and on the West Coast of South America, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1885 Guatemala Forests, The American Naturalist, Vol. XXII, No. 257, pages 385-399, May 1888