plateau, marked in purple The second of five
brothers in
Munich, Adolf, with his brother
Hermann, published a scientific study of the
Alps in 1846–1848. They established their reputation with the
Untersuchungen über die physikalische Geographie der Alpen (1850), and were afterwards joined by their brother
Robert; the three jointly published
Neue Untersuchungen über die physikalische Geographie und Geologie der Alpen in 1854. In 1854, acting on the recommendation of
Alexander von Humboldt, the
East India Company commissioned Hermann, Adolf, and Robert to make scientific investigations in their territory and particularly to study the Earth's magnetic field. For the next three years, they travelled through the
Deccan, then up into the
Himalayas,
Karakoram, and
Kunlun Mountains. While Hermann and Robert returned from their travels in early 1857, Adolf went back for further exploration on his own. He followed a new, heretofore unknown road via the
Chang Chenmo Valley,
Lingzi Tang Plains and the
Aksai Chin. He gave the name "Great Aksai Chin" to this region, and followed the
Karakash River valley to Turkestan. Suspected of being a
Chinese spy, and without benefit of a trial, he was
beheaded in
Kashgar by
Wali Khan, the emir of
Kashgar in August. The circumstances of his death were not known in Europe until 1859, when
Chokan Valikhanov visited Kashgar disguised as a merchant and successfully returned to the Russian Empire with the scientist's head. The return of his head provided a plot element in
Rudyard Kipling's famous story "
The Man Who Would Be King" (1888). In 2017 Lahore Museum Pakistan found 50 masks that the Schlagintweit brothers made during their Indian research visit in 1854–58. These ethnographic masks of various Indian communities shed light on Indian ethnic diversity. ==Standard author abbreviation==