Joseph-Gaëtan-Pierre-Maxime-Marie Callery or Giuseppe Gaetano Pietro Massimo Maria Calleri in Italian form (25 June 1810 – 8 June 1862) was an Italian-French Roman Catholic missionary who travelled into Southeast Asia where he studied Chinese and collected specimens of natural history from the region. He published an encyclopedia on the Chinese language and several species of plants have been named after him. Callery was born in

Turin Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...

where his mother Anna Maria Antonia was a tailor and his father Gaetano a silk merchant. He studied the classics in

Lyons Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...

and worked for a while as a shop clerk. He was ordained priest in 1834 following studies at the Missions étrangères de Paris. He was sent into Southeast Asia, but unable to get to his destination in Korea, he lived in Macau where he studied Chinese under the Portuguese sinologist Joaquim Afonso Gonçalves (1780–1844). In 1841 he published a dictionary of Chinese in Latin. In 1842 he was expelled from the mission and after a return to France he received a new position as an interpreter for Théodore de Lagrené's Embassy in Macao. He helped in the success of the

Treaty of Whampoa The Treaty of Whampoa () was an unequal treaty between the Kingdom of France and the Qing dynasty of China, which was signed by Qiying and Théodore de Lagrené on October 24, 1844, aboard the warship ''L’Archimède''. Terms China was to grant ...

between the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

and the Kingdom of France.He returned to Paris in 1846 where he lived the rest of his life. Callery collected specimens of natural history during his travels. Some of his bird specimens were presented to the Turin museum. The plants '' Eugenia calleryana'' and ''

Pyrus calleryana ''Pyrus calleryana'', also known as the Callery pear, is a species of pear tree native to East Asia in the family Rosaceae. Its cultivar Bradford pear, known for its offensive odor, is widely planted throughout the United States and increasingly ...

'' were named from among the nearly 2000 species of plants that he collected. He married Henriette-Louise-Clémentine Quelquejeu in 1861 in Lisses and they had six children including the historian Alphonse (1847–1909). He died at the age of 51 and was buried at the cemetery at

Montmartre Montmartre ( , , ) is a large hill in Paris's northern 18th arrondissement of Paris, 18th arrondissement. It is high and gives its name to the surrounding district, part of the Rive Droite, Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for its a ...

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Systema phoneticum scripturae Sinicae
(1841) {{DEFAULTSORT:Callery, Joseph Marie 1810 births 1862 deaths French sinologists