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First to realize earthquakes are connected through movement
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A huge earthquake and tsunami in Portugal killed over 70,000 people. This marked the start of modern earthquake studies, as people began to collect data to help understand the events.
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Luigi Palmieri invented the first accurate electromagnetic seismograph, which could detect earthquakes not felt by humans.
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John Milne suggests a machine that could measure seismic activity
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John Pratt and George Airy suggested that surface rocks float on a layer of denser rock.
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Robert Mallet realized that most earthquake damage is due to moving waves caused by a sudden land movement, named seismic waves.
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Grove Gilbert Discovered that earthquakes usually occur around fault lines
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For the first time, a seismometer (in Germany) detected an earthquake on the other side of the Earth (in Japan).
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Richard Oldham realized that there were at least two types of seismic waves that travelled at different speeds. We know these now as P-waves and S-waves.
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First U.S. Seismograph installed at Lick University
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Ernest Rutherford claimed that the Earth is heated by atomic reactions.
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After the most destructive earthquake in American history at San Francisco, Harry Reid suggested that earthquakes are the result of stresses built up along faults.
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Giuseppe Mercalli creates the Intensity Scale that measures the damage that my be caused in an earthquake
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Hypothesized that earthquakes were likely the result of buildup pressure along fault lines.
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Andrija Mohorovicic realized that you could use seismic waves to probe the hidden Earth.
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Alfred Wegener put forward the idea of continental drift. His theory was that the continents were once joined to form a giant supercontinent that he called Pangaea.
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Charles Richter creates the Richter scale to measure the intensity of earthquakes
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Inge Lehmann used data from P-waves to suggest the existence of an inner core to the Earth.
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A worldwide earthquake monitoring system was set up. Several systems now exist, including the Global Seismographic Network. They contribute to the understanding of plate tectonics and other Earth processes.
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The realization that ocean floors behave differently to continents led to the theory of plate tectonics.
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Xuedong Song and Paul Richards, using P-waves, discovered that the solid inner core rotates freely within the fluid outer core and at a different speed to the rest of the Earth.
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First slow slip events recorded in New Zealand.
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Kaikoura's 7.9 earthquake was so complex and unusual that it is likely to change conventional seismic hazard models.
