Dutch Guianan lawyer, botanist and ethnologist. Focke was born in Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana (Suriname). He travelled to the Netherlands to study law at Utrecht before returning to his homeland in 1834, where he pursued interests in botany, ethnology and linguistics alongside his professional work as a lawyer. He immediately set about making plant collections, sets of which he sent to F.A.W. Miquel (then at the clinical school of Rotterdam, but soon to become director of the herbarium at the University of Utrecht). He described a number of orchids in Botanische Zeitung in 1853 and in the Tijdschrift voor de Wis- en Natuurkundige Wetenschappen (1849 and 1851). Several species were named after him by others, for instance Pleurothallis fockei Lindl. (=Acianthera fockei (Lindl.) Pridgeon & M.W. Chase). Focke's main contribution to botany was his collections, however, upon which was based Plantae Surinamensis & Guyanensis. He published many of his botanical papers in the periodical West-Indie, of which he was an editor from 1854-1856. He also published ethnographic articles in the title. An ardent student of his country's culture and native languages, he authored the pioneering Neger-Engelsch woordenboek (Negro-English Dictionary), providing a translation of the English-based creole, the Sranan language of Suriname.

Sources:
Anon., 1857, Botanische Zeitung, 15: 328
1857, Bonplandia, 5: 171
A. Pulle, 1906, An enumeration of the vascular plants known from Suriname, together with their distribution and synonymy: 5.