Whose work first mapped the global distribution of earthquakes?

John Milne did not just help build instruments; he also helped create earthquake catalogs from worldwide observations. By collecting reports from many seismic stations, he made it possible to compare where earthquakes happened and how often. This helped reveal that earthquakes are unevenly distributed and closely linked to tectonic structures. Global earthquake mapping later became essential for plate tectonics and hazard planning. Milne's legacy is part instrumentation, part data science, and part planetary-scale discovery.