John Milne | |
|---|---|
 John Milne, c. 1910 | |
| Born | 30 December 1850 Liverpool, England |
| Died | 31 July 1913(1913-07-31) (aged 62) Shide,Isle of Wight, England |
| Occupations | Scientist, educator, foreign advisor to Japan |
| Known for | Foreign advisor toMeiji Japan |
| Spouse | Tone Horikawa |
| Awards | Lyell Medal(1894) Royal Medal(1908) |
John Milne (30 December 1850 – 31 July 1913)[1][2] was a Britishgeologist and miningengineer who worked on a horizontalseismograph.
Milne was born inLiverpool, England, the only child of John Milne ofMilnrow, and at first raised inTunshill and later moved toRichmond, London, and then in 1895 to the Isle of Wight with his wife.[3][4] He was educated atKing's College London (AKC in Applied Science, 1870) and theRoyal School of Mines.
In the summers of 1873 and 1874, following a recommendation by theRoyal School of Mines, Milne was hired byCyrus Field as a mining engineer to exploreNewfoundland and Labrador in search of coal and mineral resources. During this time he also wrote papers on the interaction of ice and rock,[5] and visitedFunk Island, writing another paper on the newly extinctgreat auk.[6] In December 1873 Milne accompanied DrCharles Tilstone Beke on an expedition to determine the true location ofMount Sinai in northwest Arabia. He took the opportunity to study the geology of theSinai Peninsula and passed on a collection of fossils to theBritish Museum.
Milne was hired by theMeiji government of theEmpire of Japan as aforeign advisor and professor of mining and geology at theImperial College of Engineering in Tokyo from 8 March 1876, where he worked underHenry Dyer and withWilliam Edward Ayrton andJohn Perry. Partly from a sense of adventure and partly because he suffered fromseasickness, he travelled overland acrossSiberia taking three months to reach Tokyo.
In 1880,Sir Alfred Ewing,Thomas Gray, and John Milne, all British scientists working in Japan, began to studyearthquakes following a very large tremor which struck the Yokohama area that year. They founded theSeismological Society of Japan (SSJ).[7] The society funded the invention of seismographs to detect and measure the strength of earthquakes. Although all three men worked as a team on the invention and use of seismographs, John Milne is generally credited with the invention of the horizontal pendulumseismograph in 1880.[8] Milne's instruments permitted him to detect different types ofseismic waves, and estimate velocities. In addition, the foreign professors trained Japanese students includingSeikei Sekiya who would become, at the Imperial University, the first professor of seismology at any university in the world and his successor,Fusakichi Omori[9] who refined Milne's instruments to detect and record finer vibrations.In 1881, he had marriedTone Horikawa, daughter of Horikawa Noritsune inHakodate.
In June 1895, Milne was commanded to attend a meeting with His Imperial Majesty Emperor Mutsuhito and following this, returned to England. Soon after his arrival he learned that the Emperor had conferred upon him a rare distinction, The Third Grade of theOrder of the Rising Sun and a life pension of 1,000 yen. This was in recognition of Professor Milne's contributions to seismology during his long residence in Japan.[10][11]
From 1882, Milne contributed also toanthropology. He helped to develop theories on the origin of theAinu of northern Japan and on the prehistoric racial background of Japan in general. He excavated for several years in theOmorishell mound and introduced the concept of theKoro-pok-guru, linked with theInuit.Koropok-guru is from an Ainu word meaning "the man under theFuki," i.e. a small person. An Ainu legend concerning their existence seems first to have been reported by Milne. But he believed their prehistoric sites to be only inHokkaidō. For northeastern Japan proper, he supported the tradition which ascribed prehistoric sites to the Ainu, who lived in pits and made stone implements andpottery. He considered the inhabitants of theKurile Islands,Sakhalin and southernKamchatka to be of a different race, but possibly related to theKoro-pok-guru. He anticipated the work of scientists who recognised, in excavated materials, different prehistoric cultures for Hokkaidō and northeastern Japan.[12]His first cousinWilliam Scoresby Routledge (related through his mother, Emma Twycross) was also an anthropologist. With his wifeKatherine, Routledge worked in the early twentieth century in East Africa with theKikuyu and onEaster Island (Rapa Nui).
After a fire on 17 February 1895 destroyed his home,observatory, library, and many of his instruments, Milne resigned his posts on 20 June 1895 and returned to England with his Japanese wife, settling at Shide Hill House,Shide, on theIsle of Wight, where he continued his seismographic studies. He was made a professor emeritus ofTokyo Imperial University.
He was elected aFellow of the Royal Society in 1887 and persuaded the Society to fund 20 earthquake observatories around the world, equipped with his horizontal pendulumseismographs. His network initially included seven in England, three in Russia, two in Canada (one inToronto and one in Victoria,British Columbia), three on the east coast of the United States, and one inAntarctica, eventually growing to total forty worldwide. These stations sent their 'station registers' to Milne, where the data formed the basis of Milne's researches. For the next 20 years, Milne's seismological observatory was the world headquarters for earthquake seismology. In 1898, Milne (withW. K. Burton) publishedEarthquakes and Other Earth Movements, which came to be regarded as a classic textbook on earthquakes.
The need for international exchange of readings was soon recognised by Milne in his annual "Shide Circular Reports on Earthquakes" published from 1900 to 1912. This work was destined to develop in theInternational Seismological Summary being set up immediately after theFirst World War.
He delivered theBakerian Lecture to the Royal Society in 1906 entitledRecent Advances in Seismology and was awarded theirRoyal Medal in 1908.[13]
Milne died ofBright's disease on 31 July 1913 and, after a service inSt. Paul's Church, Newport, was buried in the civic cemetery to the north of the church.[14] His Japanese wife Tone returned to Japan in 1919 and died in 1926.
To mark the 100th anniversary of Milne's death, a public artwork has been commissioned for Little London near the harbour atNewport. The local Parish Council is providing a detailed explanatory board atShide.[citation needed]
Works by or aboutJohn Milne atWikisource
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