Akitsune Imamura: Difference between revisions

{{nihongo|'''Akitsune Imamura'''|今村 明恒|''Imamura Akitsune''|[[Kagoshima]], 14 June 1870 – 1 January 1948}} was a Japanese [[seismology|seismologist]]. Born in a poor family, he nonetheless managed to study at the Imperial [[University of Tokyo]]. In 1899, in anticipation of the later theory of [[plate tectonics]], he argued that the [[tsunami]] that struck the [[Sanriku Coast|Sanriku coast]] of [[Honshū]] island in 1896 (known as the [[Meiji period|Meiji]] Sanriku tsunami) had been triggered by movements of the [[earth's crust]] under the sea. In a paper written in 1905, he predicted that a major earthquake would hit the [[Kantō]] region around [[Tokyo]] within 50 years and kill over 100,000 people, and advocated that measures be taken. His worries materialized when the [[Great Kantō earthquake]] devastated Tokyo in 1923, claiming more than 100,000 victims. In 1939, while working for the Seismological Observatory of Tokyo University, Imamura made a reconstruction of [[Zhang Heng#Zhang.%27s seismometer|Zhang Heng's seismometer]] (132 CE), considered to have been the first such device ever made.