Background
Aikitsu Tanakadate was born in 1856 in the area of modern Iwate Prefecture.
Aikitsu Tanakadate was born in 1856 in the area of modern Iwate Prefecture.
In 1882 he completed the physics course of Tokyo Imperial University, where he studied under the American scholar Thomas Corwin Mendenhall and the British scholar James Alfred Ewing. In 1889 he went to the University of Glasgow, where he studied under Lord Kelvin, and the following year to the University of Berlin.
Upon his return to Japan in 1891 he became a professor of Tokyo Imperial University.
He received a Cultural Award in 1944.
As a result of the Nobi earthquake in the same year, he worked to set up the Seismologi- cal Investigation Committee, which as the basis of its investigations carried out studies of terrestrial magnetism throughout Japan. He also guided Kimura Hisashi and others in establishing the International Latitude Observatory of Mizusawa in Iwate Prefecture.
He was very active in pioneer researches in the field of aviation, set up an aviation research center, and helped to lay the foundations for civil aviation in Japan. He thus played a leading role in the promotion of geophysics and the physics of aerial navigation in Japan. As a member of the Imperial Academy and the Science Research Council, he did much to encourage the advancement of science and technology and was also active in the international exchange of scientific information. In addition to these activities, he worked to bring about the spread of the metric system in Japan and promoted the development and adoption of the Nihonshiki system of romanization for the Japanese language.
